


Shadows in the Room

by peacensafety



Series: Shadows [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU Alternate Universe, F/F, M/M, No Epic Drama, No Hale Fire, Regular Amounts of High School Angst, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-11-28 19:31:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacensafety/pseuds/peacensafety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura and Derek are twins. They get along together wonderfully until puberty and Laura's new best friend, a boy with the improbable name of Stiles Stilinski, gets in the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I only updated it to change Angel's name to Cora, since I wrote this before Season 3. I should be working on this series, but I had to go spend some time in New Orleans so I could reacquaint myself with the city a bit before I had Derek and Stiles living there and all. So I did that! I hope to have the next couple of chapters to Shadow Walker up soon!

When Laura and Derek are in seventh grade, a lot of changes take place in the Hale household. 

Their mom gives birth to a new baby, which is incredibly embarrassing because now everyone at school knows their parents have sex, which is probably the most disgusting thing in the world to even think about parents doing. The baby is a girl and she’s named Tabitha, but Derek and Laura call her Tabby. She’s tons better than their little brother Isaac, who’s five and disrespectful as hell, but nowhere near as cool as Cora, who’s ten and can often be found hiding from everyone in the attic or in the tops of trees, reading stories about witches and wizards or sketching pictures of dragons. 

Also, Derek and Laura, for the first time in their lives, are put in different classes. Laura has somehow made it to the Gifted and Talented program, and while Derek is smart he’s just not as into learning as he is into sports and art. He makes the school’s baseball team, and he runs cross country in the fall. He makes good grades, but he doesn’t show that extra whatever that makes their teachers think he can handle the Gifted and Talented class.

On top of that, Uncle Peter comes to live with them. Even with five kids in the house, there’s plenty of room for Uncle Peter, who takes one of the bedrooms on the far side of the third story of their house. Laura and Derek don’t know why he came to live with them, and they’re not really sure they care why he came to live with them, but he’s a Hell of a lot of fun and he is sarcastic and funny and makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. Cora and Isaac both hate him, but Laura and Derek and Tabby love him to death.

The thing that causes the most stress though, the thing that worries their parents the most, is the fact that Laura made a new best friend. Stiles was in the Gifted and Talented class with her, and he just moved to Beacon Hills because his dad got elected Sheriff from another town in their county, but Laura quickly starts to think that he hung the moon. She doesn’t have a crush on him or anything, she swears, but Stiles gets her in a way that her family just can’t. Derek thinks that Stiles is nosy and sarcastic and annoying, possibly even more annoying than Isaac. Laura becomes glued to Stiles’s side, and Stiles is soon included in lots of Hale family events that don’t involve their little secret, although even that doesn’t last long around Stiles because, like Derek said, he’s nosy. 

Stiles finds out that they’re werewolves in eighth grade. The beginning of eighth grade, actually. Derek and Laura overhear their parents discussing if they should take those memories away from Stiles, but he turns out to be a pretty good ally when an omega wolf shows up and Stiles thinks of some pretty creative and horrifyingly believable lies to tell his dad, the sheriff, about a mountain lion to protect Laura’s secret. The Hales can’t believe that he did that, that he showed that kind of loyalty, and to Derek’s everlasting chagrin Stiles is soon included in everything. Which starts to make Derek feel kind of bad, once he finds out that Stiles’s mom died from cancer in sixth grade and his dad is away from home with his job all the time and Stiles was in the middle of making himself a microwave Thanksgiving dinner when Laura dragged him home to their house after calling him to wish him a Happy Thanksgiving. 

Laura and Stiles stay inside after dinner is over to work on a Biology project about recycling, while Derek’s friends come over to play football. Jackson, Danny, Boyd, and Derek are pretty much inseparable at this point, although Jackson pauses the game when Lydia comes over to join Laura and Stiles inside the house. She’s apparently a member of their group, and she brought over a stack of books that they’re using for research. Jackson offers to carry them inside the house, but Lydia scoffs at him and marches her stylish Mary Janes away from him, only to dump her books in Stiles’s arms with a very loud complaint that they’re heavy.

This starts so many wars, it’s not even funny.

Jackson hates Stiles, and uses every opportunity he can find to torture the gawky teenager. Laura yells at Derek for allowing it. Lydia only ignores Jackson more, which escalates his negative treatment of Stiles, which makes even Scott McCall, the runty asthmatic in gym class feel the need to say something to Jackson. Laura yells at Derek because even Scott is trying to get in on Jackson’s treatment of Stiles, and Jackson gets even more mad when Lydia starts including Scott in hers and Laura’s and Stiles’s lunch table and continues to ignore Jackson. 

Drama in Eighth Grade is intense, but when Derek shares this observation with Uncle Peter, he seems to think it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard and Derek’s parents giggle a little about it, too. Derek knows that it’s not the adults’ fault, they’re just old and they don’t remember what it’s like to be a teenager anyway. 

The summer before high school Stiles went to spend a month with his mother’s family in some Eastern European country, leaving Laura and Lydia behind in what Laura later dubbed The Summer of Horrifying Hormones.

They were everywhere, as far as Derek could tell. The air was absolutely polluted with the smell of arousal and a general air of anger. The local teenage population almost needed a spider web graphic organizer to chart to explain exactly what was going on. Jackson was in love with Lydia, who was more interested in Laura, who blushed like mad every time Boyd was around, who was actually was in love with a girl who lived next door to him named Erica, who tried to keep getting alone with Derek, who was in general just horny but it was nothing a good run through the woods couldn’t’ take care of. He never got interested in anyone in particular, so he spent most of his time poking fun of his friends and Laura. 

About a week before Stiles was due back, Laura came to the dinner table looking pale but determined to hide the reason why. Because it was only family that night, their mom immediately asked her what was wrong. 

“I can’t tell,” Laura said.

“Laura, there is no such thing you can’t tell your family or your pack,” their mom said, her Alpha eyes flashing red at her oldest daughter.

“It’s not my secret,” Laura said, but tears were falling from her eyes.

Derek watches his twin sister, fascinated that she’s so upset and getting kind of upset himself. Their younger sisters and brother are all making little sounds of distress, and finally their mother takes a deep breath. “Laura, we can help, you know. That’s why we’re here.”

“You can’t,” Laura gets up to run from the table. “There’s nothing we can do, we can’t save Stiles.”

Derek feels his heart speeding up, but as he can hear everyone else at the table he knows his isn’t the only one. “What’s wrong with Stiles?” Uncle Peter asks.

“He’s dying!” Laura cries. “He’s dying, and he’s in Poland, and I can’t be there to take the pain away.”

“Why is Stiles dying?” their mom asks, but Laura’s already run out the back door into the woods. Derek glances at his parents only for a moment before running after her, to catch her and bring her back, to make their parents talk to her until things are okay. It takes him almost thirty minutes, but he catches Laura and he’s finally big enough to throw her over his shoulder and force her back into the house.

He stops when he sees the Sheriff in their kitchen, his face buried in his hands as he’s sobbing quietly in front of their parents. His dad and his Uncle Peter are all wolfed out, and Derek can’t believe that the Sheriff is so completely relaxed about the fact that he’s sitting in a kitchen with two werewolves and he’s open enough to be crying in front of them.

Their mother is on the phone with an airline, and Derek is shocked to find out that she’s making round trip reservations for Uncle Peter and changing Stiles’s flight so he will come back with him. He knows something huge is going on, but he can’t, for the life of him, figure out what it is.

“The Stilinskis are part of our pack, now,” is all Uncle Peter will tell Derek, even after Derek bugs the hell out of him for three straight hours before his dad takes him to the airport.

It takes close to three days, but Derek gets back from hanging out at Jackson’s just minutes before Stiles and Uncle Peter pull up in Peter’s Mercedes. Derek runs out to the car because he can see that Stiles is whiter than usual and Peter gestures with his head to help Stiles out of the car.

Derek picks Stiles up, and is shocked when he whimpers in pain when Derek touches his back. Stiles has always been skinny and smaller than him, but Derek still staggers a little bit when he picks the boy up because he’s so Goddamn light, even Laura weighs more than he does. Derek carefully adjusts Stiles in his arms, and Stiles tries to smile at him but it’s so obvious that he’s in some pretty serious pain that Derek hurts for him. 

“Hey Der’,” Stiles whispers, and he licks his lips like it’ll make his voice stronger or something. “Have a nice summer?”

“Better than yours, apparently,” Derek says, and he needs to know what happened. 

“Give him to me,” Laura insists, meeting him halfway out in the front yard.

“I’ve got him,” Derek says, feeling strangely possessive over the boy in his arms. 

Laura frowns, but she follows Derek and Stiles into the house, and Uncle Peter is carrying Stiles’s suitcase.

Their mom is already at the door, and she gestures for Derek to put Stiles on the couch. “Take it off, let me see,” she tells him, and Stiles blushes, harshly red against his pale skin, but he takes his shirt off and leans forward.

Derek gasps. Stiles has been tattooed from the base of his neck all across his right shoulder blade, but it isn’t like any tattoo like he’s ever seen before. Lines make up some sort of writing in a language that Derek doesn’t know, black and red making stark and obviously painful marks across the thin wing of his shoulder blade and whispering against the top of his spinal column.

“You’re not supposed to do this so quickly,” their mom says, and Laura’s crying at the sight.

“It just kept coming,” Stiles says, biting at the bottom of his lip. “Babcia said that she’s never seen it just attack anyone like it did me.”

“You should have told us, Stiles,” their mom grunts. “We could have started the transition before you went this summer.” She puts her hand on the tattoo, and Derek stares as inky blackness starts creeping up her arm. He knows that they can pull pain out of people, but every time its happened before it crawls into their skin in inky lines. This pain, Stiles’s pain turns her arm pure black, and Derek knows if his mother wasn’t the Alpha she would have passed out by now. Derek comes closer, needing to help spread the pain around so none of them have to take the full brunt of it, but his mother glares at him to back off.

“I had no idea that you could start it,” Stiles said, “and it’s not like I’m allowed to talk about it outside of The Family.”

Derek hears the capital letters, and he wonders what’s so special about Stiles’s family. “What does it mean?” Derek asks.

Stiles is still blushing, but Derek can see some of the color returning to his face. “We’re witches,” he whispers. “Magic kind of controls us, until we can learn to control it. It’s a secret, like your family’s wolfiness.”

Derek just kind of smiles at him ‘cause he’s seen Harry Potter and he’s been to the local craft fairs where Wiccans and hippies sell home grown herbs. Stiles shrugs like he doesn’t expect Derek to care that much anyway, but his mother frowns at him. “I’m not used to your family’s style of magic, Stiles,” and Derek is surprised that his mom is taking Stiles’s nonsense seriously, “but your grandmother told me some of the basics to look out for. Your dad agreed to leave you at our house for the rest of the summer so that you can have someone watching over you, but I don’t want you using it until you can heal up from this. No new spells, understood?”

Stiles looks unsure of himself. “I didn’t mean to do all of them at once like that, it just kind of happened.”

His mother is still frowning. “It isn’t good that you have this much power this early.”

Stiles nods, and he looks really tired after his mother takes her hand away. 

“Your grandmother said that she didn’t know what happened, because you shouldn’t have this much power for at least another ten years. The tattoos appear after you unlock a spell?” his mom is asking Stiles.

Stiles nods. “Yeah, and they hurt like a bitch. Babcia said that she had an uncle that died from the magic, because it tore through him so quickly and he couldn’t deal with the pain. But there were Nazis, and he was in love with a Jewish girl…” Stiles blushes. “It happens like that sometimes.”

“Well, we should be safe then,” Laura said, kneeling at Stiles feet to look into his eyes. “Stiles doesn’t love anyone.”

Stiles has some kind of shit eating grin on his face. “No one that needs defending from Nazis, in any case.”

“What happened that you had to use this much?” Mrs. Hale asks. “What happened that got you this emotional, that you needed this much magic all at once?”

Stiles looks out the window of the living room. “There were Hunters,” he said. “In the middle of Poland, and there was just a little kid, a little werewolf, running, and they were shooting…”

Derek fights the shiver that runs up his spine. Stiles is a tiny kid himself, and Hunters are vicious against weres and they could take Derek down if he were by himself.

“You defended a kid by yourself?” Laura asks.

Stiles’s eyelids are heavy. “There were eighteen of them. I couldn’t let them hurt a kid, the kid was innocent.”

“Jesus,” Derek whispers, but no one pays attention to him. 

Stiles stays the summer, and Mrs. Hale takes care of him. The entire pack, including Uncle Peter, spend time taking pain out of his back. It drains slowly, and Derek wonders why the magic causes so much pain, wonders how anyone could stand it. The adults don’t let the kids help at all for the first week, and even after that they can’t touch Stiles by themselves for weeks after that. It hurts, it’s too much, but Derek finds that he can take more than Laura, finds that he feels the need to take as much pain away from Stiles as he can. He can’t imagine this tiny kid holding this much pain inside of him and never complaining, because when Derek starts to take it away it hurts so bad that he wants to cry.

By the time that school starts again, Stiles is walking around with barely a limp. Which is really a good thing, because high school? It’s like it was specifically designed to torture Stiles. 

The upper classmen are complete assholes to all of the freshmen. It’s expected; they’ve been warned about it and they know most of the teachers will turn a blind eye on the hazing process. The problem is, most of the freshmen have a bad tendency to fight back, so everything escalates and lasts a lot longer than if they had just taken their licks and shut up. 

Stiles is the first to get picked on, and Derek isn’t the type to stand back and let that happen. Boyd, Jackson, and Danny immediately separate the senior who punches Stiles in the face from Stiles, but the other seniors jump in to try and instruct the freshmen that they can do anything they want, and punches get thrown eventually until Derek and Stiles both get thrown through one of the huge picture windows in the front lobby of the school.

Derek immediately makes his way to Stiles’s side, ignoring the shouts and the blood dripping from his own forearms, and he sees that he took the brunt of the impact. Stiles is still sporting a few shallow cuts on his face and back, and Derek knows that Stiles doesn’t like people staring at his back but he still pulls up his shirt to make sure that Stiles isn’t hiding any cuts. He sees that there are a few, and it wasn’t like Stiles had healed completely from almost dying over the summer, so Derek jumps back through the broken window and completely loses his temper, but fortunately not his control because he doesn’t shift as he whales on the seniors that threw Stiles out of the window. 

Laura is the only one who can get him to get off the older kids, even though the teachers all tried to stop the fight. Lydia and Danny are helping Stiles stand up, but he passes out from blood loss.

When Stiles dad comes to the school to pick his son up, finding out that Stiles’s dad is the sheriff only makes things worse. The seniors say that was favoritism when the ones who were eighteen get locked up and Stiles’s dad refused to lock up Derek, even though all of the witnesses say that he only fought in defense of Stiles until he got thrown out the window. After that everyone agreed it was pretty much pure temper, but the parents of the seniors weren’t interested in pressing charges because the suspensions that everyone got seemed fair to them. 

Things escalate again in the fall, when the freshmen are gathered at Jackson’s house as a class to try and design the class float for the homecoming parade. The seniors think that throwing raw eggs on the freshmen sounds like a good time, but they don’t plan on Lydia pulling frozen eggs out of a cooler to hurl back at them. When the seniors retaliate by chasing the kids down, the freshmen as a class pick up 2x4’s that they were using to build their float and hit the bigger kids back.

The cops aren’t called on that one, mostly because the senior class is too embarrassed to admit that the freshmen kicked their asses. 

Derek is surprised to find that every time some sort of violence is happening between them and the seniors he looks out for Stiles first. He attributes a lot of that to the fact that his mother declared Stiles Pack and he spent the summer in pain that Derek shared with him.

Other than the random violence, Derek kind of just ignores his sister and her friends. He spends most of his time with Jackson, Boyd, and Danny playing Lacrosse and video games and hanging out. His sister and her friends are doing science fairs and visiting colleges and playing Knowledge Bowl and Student United Nations. Their paths don’t cross on a regular basis.

During Christmas, Stiles and his dad are at the Hale House celebrating with them. Stiles turns out to be an amazing cook, and Derek’s mom lets him take over the kitchen for a few days while he makes their home smell like a professional catering company. The sheriff says that Stiles used to cook with his mom before she died, and that he is always trying things out since he’s in charge of the kitchen at their house.

Laura declares him to be the best Best Friend ever, and Derek is inclined to agree, but he would never say anything like that out loud. 

Spring rolls around, and the seniors have stopped caring about the freshmen. Jackson makes the observation that they’re probably just tired of getting their asses kicked, but Stiles interjects (because they’re all hanging out in the Hale living room) that it might have something more to do with the fact that most of the freshmen boys have gone through their growth spurts. Not that Stiles has, Derek thinks, because he’s still tiny and underweight, but Derek and his friends are now nearing six feet tall and thanks to the hours of Lacrosse that they’ve put in they’ve all got decent muscle mass. 

That summer, Stiles stops by before with his dad before he gets driven to the airport for his summer trip to Poland. Mrs. Hale gives him some things to give to his grandmother, and she warns Stiles to take it easy while he’s learning. Laura snuffles into Stiles’s shoulder a little bit, even though she has to lean way down to do it, because Stiles still hasn’t grown a whole lot. Derek is surprised by the urge to pat Stiles on the back and maybe hug him, too, but he forgets about it when Stiles and his dad drive away.

Derek does a lot of swimming that summer, distracted by a new girl in town named Kate Argent who gets a job at the pool as a life guard. Derek isn’t quite old enough to apply yet, so he drags his friends with him to check her out in her red bathing suit. She’s about to be a senior, and she’s beautiful and she’s got big boobs and Derek finally gets her to kiss him behind the pool’s bath house.

They fool around, a lot. Kate drives by the Hale House and picks Derek up, and Derek has to ignore Cora and Laura and Isaac and even Tabby frowning at Kate, because they all hate her guts for some reason. His parents don’t say a word, but Derek isn’t very reassured that they approve of her, either. 

Derek doesn’t matter, because of course it’s true love. He loves Kate, and she loves him. They spend hours talking on the phone, and making out, but Kate won’t take him home to meet her brother and his family, who have custody of her while their dad is away on business. It’s okay, because honestly Derek isn’t really concerned with Kate’s family, not when she lets him put his hands up her shirt and down her pants while they’re kissing.

Cora starts to get annoying for the first time in Derek’s life. She starts asking Laura every night at the dinner table when Stiles is getting home, and if he’s magic like Harry Potter or like Anathema Device or maybe even more like Willow Rosenberg. She declares that Stiles probably is the best looking out of all of Derek’s and Laura’s friends, because have they just seen his eyelashes? 

Derek really, really doesn’t like it when Cora keeps talking about Stiles. He really, really doesn’t. it doesn’t make sense; all of the girls at school like Jackson or Derek or Boyd or Danny, all of them. While Derek is prepared to understand the reason why Cora doesn’t like him (duh,) out of all the boys that Cora could choose from, why Stiles?

Laura rolls her eyes at Derek and declares that a lot of girls like Stiles, he’s really popular in the honors classes and Erica has even asked him out a few times. Stiles doesn’t ever seem to get that anyone likes him though, like there’s someone that he likes and he’s waiting for her to ask him out or waiting to ask the hypothetical her out, but that train of conversation just leads to Cora sulking for the rest of the summer that Stiles might like someone. 

Not that Derek cares, not really, because Kate and he carry on their relationship for the rest of the summer and they actually have sex, which is the most mind-blowing thing in the world. Kate’s amazing in so many ways, even though she’s kind of a bitch to all of Derek’s friends, and sometimes Derek doesn’t like her very much. Still, sex is awesome.

Laura comes back from Stiles’s house right before summer ends looking a little gobsmacked. She doesn’t say anything at all, but goes straight to her room and locks the door and plays really loud music while she talks on the phone with Lydia. Then she takes a really long shower, and Derek really wishes that he didn’t get what was going on.

Lydia comes over that night with the same gobsmacked look on her face, and she and Laura spend the rest of the night locked up in Laura’s room, giggling and whispering to each other. Derek keeps hearing Stiles’s name, and it’s really the most annoying thing in the entire world. 

After tenth grade starts, Kate acts like she doesn’t even know who Derek is. Derek walked up to her at school to say hi, and she stared at him blankly before walking off with a bunch of seniors and completely ignoring his presence like just because he’s a sophomore he’s trash. Jackson doesn’t make anything better by laughing his ass off that Derek got dissed so publically, but Derek gets him back on the Lacrosse field during practice. Jackson might be bruised spectacularly, but Derek feels better.

It takes Derek a few weeks to even recognize Stiles, and then it’s only after Stiles is walking down the hall in a cross country uniform that Derek realizes it’s him. He’s grown in all sorts of really interesting ways that Derek has to look at twice or maybe even three times so make sure that’s the scrawny kid who is best friends with his twin sister, because Stiles is almost as tall as Derek and his shoulders might even be wider. He’s got on the red Beacon Hills track uniform with his right sock pulled up almost to his knee, and he grins wide and kind of pretty when he sees Derek. 

Derek is staring though, so he doesn’t return Stiles’s greeting, because Stiles somehow got hot over the summer. Derek didn’t think that he was into guys, but now he’s questioning himself. Then Stiles starts asking Derek questions like he didn’t notice that Derek hasn’t said a word, and Derek kind of exhales in relief. Stiles is still the same annoying kid he’s always been, just now he’s in the shape of a man.

Derek sees Stiles everywhere after that, and he’s surprised that Stiles has taken to wearing eyeliner. At least, Derek thinks it’s eyeliner, because there’s no reason that his eyelashes should be that thick and dark and girls use eye liner for that exact effect that Stiles pulls off, and it makes his eyes gold all the time. Derek finds himself having uncomfortable dreams about Stiles, about Stiles kissing his neck and letting Derek fuck him, and it is really starting to mess with Derek during the day. 

Derek notices all sorts of things about Stiles now, and not a single one of them make him any more comfortable. Stiles has ridiculous lips, and a bubble butt, and his hair is grown out and it sticks up like someone has been raking their hands through it, and Stiles has really good arms and how did he get those by working out with his laptop? And Stiles is really smart, like, really, really smart and Derek doesn’t know why but it’s something that he likes more than anything else, that Stiles, a member of his pack, is one of the smartest kids in school.

In the fall, Derek and Laura turn sixteen, but this year they’re celebrating with Stiles, who has the exact same birthday as they do. Derek tries to remember if that was true the years before, and he knows logically that it should have been, but he just hadn’t noticed it before. Derek and Laura get matching Camaros, and Stiles gets an old beat up Jeep. Stiles seems happier with his Jeep than Laura does with her Camaro, but Derek’s pretty excited about his car so he doesn’t really pay attention. 

He does notice, though, that Stiles and Laura spend an awful lot of time alone together now, and it bothers him.

They’re always together. Derek walked in on them once trying on clothing, in front of each other, for a Student United Nations presentation (they were representing the country of Djibouti, which really was no surprise since they were allowed to bid on which country they wanted to represent and Stiles begged for the tiny completely unheard of country that pronounced its name “JuBootie” and Stiles thought it was hilarious while his teammates let him go with it because his laugh, seriously, best thing ever… although Derek didn’t know if that’s why they let him do it, but it was logical to him), and they were trying on suits. Lydia was there too, getting dressed in her suit, but Derek didn’t really notice her because he was staring at his sister and Stiles getting naked near each other.

“We’re not naked,” Stiles frowned at Derek, and Derek realized that he must have said that out loud. He was sliding on a pair of dress pants that did absolutely sinful things to his ass.

“God, it’s not like Lydia and I don’t change around Stiles all the time, Derek. Hell, we change our clothing around you, too,” Laura paused, and then she looked at Derek oddly, her head tilted to the side like she was thinking of something, and Derek made himself snarl in defense.

“I’m telling mom you’re changing your clothing in front of Stiles,” Derek said, turning around and walking out of Laura’s room. 

“Stiles is Pack, honey,” their mom says, looking confused when Derek tells her. 

“Mom, humans don’t change their clothing in front of each other like that,” Derek insists, pulling a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. 

“Really? Why not? I mean, we’d be able to tell if they were up to anything, and even if Laura did end up liking Stiles, it would be a good match.”

“Laura and Stiles would not make a good match,” scoffs Derek.

“Of course they would,” Derek’s mom looks shocked. “Stiles is already Pack, and when he’s finished learning his magic he’s going to contribute a lot to us. He’s already helped Laura out so many times, I’d be very happy if they started dating.”

“It would break Cora’s heart,” Derek says.

His mom starts looking at him just like Laura did, with her head cocked to the side.

“Whatever. I’m just trying to let you know that you might have grandchildren in the very too near future, if you let Laura and Stiles keep acting like that,” Derek starts running out of the kitchen. “Let ‘em date, I don’t care!” Derek yells, and then he runs outside into the back yard. He runs up the tallest hill and stares down at the valley, and he realizes he’s staring at Stiles’s house. It takes him a while, but he finds the window that has to be Stiles’s bedroom, because the curtains have Batman symbols all over them, and he just stares at it for a while.

Of course Laura would have a better first relationship than Derek did. If Derek had dated someone like Stiles, he would probably be just as happy as they were sure to be together. Stiles was loyal, and he was great, and he helped the Hales out all the time, and he was sexy, and beautiful, and perfect… and Derek was so fucking screwed. 

Derek just barely makes it through Christmas dinner, what with Laura and Stiles constantly whispering to each other. He wants to rip them apart, take Stiles back to his room and demand to know what they’re talking about before ripping his layers and layers of clothing off and…

Spring semester is a study of horror. Stiles has to fit in his second Physical Education requirement in the exact same block that Derek is taking his. It’s horrible and horrifying, because they have to change in the locker room together. Fortunately, Stiles is on another row of lockers because they’re assigned in alphabetical order, so Derek isn’t tortured with seeing him change clothing every single day. It’s bad enough that they have PE first period and they have to shower afterwards, and Derek convinces himself that he isn’t in the least interested in seeing Stiles with water running all over his body.

Except for that he is. He’s shocked to see that the magic has tattooed itself in a spiral up Stiles’s right calf, which is covered in dark hair that Derek just wants to lick; he wants to take his tongue and taste the bends in the marks and see if the magic has a different flavor than the rest of Stiles’s skin. 

The other boys are impressed with Stiles’s tattoos, and Stiles doesn’t mind them touching him, touching his shoulder blade. He tells them what it says in Polish but he refuses to translate it into English for them, which makes Derek glad for some reason. He can’t stand it when everyone else touches Stiles, and he glares at everyone that gets close to him because he can’t because he can’t do that to his sister and he doesn’t quite trust himself if he ever gets his hands on Stiles, doesn’t think that he can keep his touches to be non-sexual and restricted to the marks on Stiles’s skin like the other boys do and he hates it, hates himself for feeling that way.

He also hates that Stiles has to keep his tattoos covered up, because it’s against school policy for students to have tattoos. It’s why Stiles has to wear that sock on his right leg pulled all the way up and he has to wear a tee-shirt underneath his track and field and cross country uniforms. Derek hears Stiles confessing to Laura that he’s worried where his next tattoos will appear, because he isn’t sure how far he’s allowed to modify the team uniforms and still be allowed to stay on the team and he loves running. 

Derek understands, and he wants to tell Stiles that he understands, because he has to hold back all the time when he’s on the Lacrosse field, hold back the extra strength and speed that being a werewolf gives him. He wants to talk to Stiles about it, and he’s jealous again of his sister’s relationship, because she gets to share secrets with someone and Derek literally has no one to talk to about this stuff.

Stiles turns out to be a total spaz in gym class though, not that Derek’s surprised or anything. There’s times when he gets the games right, it’s not like he has no athletic ability in any case. There’s just something about his focus that reminds Derek of a bird. It’s dead on, eerily penetrating and life threatening, and then it’s far away and nowhere near what’s happening around him. Derek wants to know where Stiles goes when his eyes start seeing things that aren’t there, he wants to know what’s happening inside of his brain when he stares at the woodwork on the gym floor or a crack in the cement block walls for long minutes before he gets hit in the head by a ball or slammed into by the other boys in the class.

The girls in their class start gathering around Stiles mid-semester, talking and laughing with him in a way that’s distracting and disturbing. Derek hates it with a passion, hates that Stiles is so comfortable talking to them all and Derek wonders if they know that Stiles is dating his sister.

“How does Laura feel about all those girls around you, Stilinski?” Derek asks.

“What?” Stiles asks him, and Derek wishes suddenly that he didn’t decide to confront Stiles as he’s walking out of the shower, clad in nothing but a school towel and water from his shower making slow meandering paths down his chest and arms.

“You’d better not be cheating on my sister,” Derek settles for not threatening.

“Cheating on… what?” Stiles is completely confused, and that confuses Derek. “Dude, I’m… Laura and I aren’t…”

“You’d better make sure you take care of her, Stiles,” Derek growls at him.

“Derek,” Stiles says, “Derek, Laura and I…”

“Whatever,” Derek turns around and walks to his locker so he can pull his clothes on.

Stiles takes a deep breath behind him, but then he moves to the other side of the locker bay and pulls his own clothing on. 

Laura attacks him at lunch, and Derek really should have known that it was going to happen. “Derek, why are you threatening Stiles?”

“He flirts with a ton of girls in gym, Laura,” Derek tells her, because if Stiles isn’t going to make sure that his sister’s heart is safe Derek’s not going to stand by and watch it get broken.

“Good,” Laura says, and Derek looks at her, shocked. “I’ve been worried that he isn’t showing any interest in anyone. I don’t understand why you think you need to threaten him over it.”

“Isn’t showing… Laura, you two are…”

“Best friends?” Laura asks him, eyebrow raised. “Yes Derek, Stiles and I have been best friends for years now. I’m glad that you realized that.”

“You two aren’t…” 

“No, we really are not. I seriously think that Stiles is asexual, but if he’s flirting with girls then maybe he’s coming out of his shell, or maybe he’s just finally interested in someone.”

Derek sits back. He doesn’t know what to think, now that he doesn’t have to worry about his sister being with Stiles. It means that Stiles is unclaimed, and Derek’s mouth waters at that word. 

Laura starts to stare at him with her head tilted, and Derek knows it’s time for him to get out of the cafeteria, so he grabs his portable food and dumps his tray at the window before heading out of the cafeteria. 

Just because Stiles isn’t with Laura, it doesn’t mean that he’s going to be interested in Derek. He still might be straight, might just be a late bloomer when it comes to being interested in sex. It doesn’t mean that Derek even has a chance…

Derek walks into the boys’ bathroom and glares at some freshmen who are making out there until they leave. He looks at himself in the mirror objectively, trying to see if it’s possible that there is something there that Stiles would like. He’s been told, by multiple people, that he’s good-looking. His face holds the kind of symmetry that he’s read in magazine articles is necessary for one person to be considered good-looking. His body is healthy, strong and muscled, and his eyes are an appealing color. His hair is kind of stupid, he knows, but his teeth are white even if they aren’t as perfectly straight as Stiles’s. He stares at himself a little longer, but he figures that if Stiles doesn’t find him attractive it doesn’t really matter if everyone else does. 

He gets depressed. Really fucking depressed, he doesn’t talk to anyone (not that anyone notices this because he’s always been pretty quiet when he wasn’t beating the shit out of someone), he sleeps a lot more, and there are days that most of his effort is spent trying to stay out of his bed so that he can sleep some more. He plays hard on the Lacrosse field, lets himself lose everything there so he doesn’t have to think, and he starts drawing more. It’s like his lack of interaction with people inspires some explosion of creativity inside of his head and it follows down the electrical signals from his brain out to his hands and it just has to end up on paper, somehow. 

His parents encourage the art, clear out a space in the attic for him to go to so he can get away from everyone. He stays up there for hours, when he’s not at school or Lacrosse practice he’s hiding away in his attic, filling up canvases and collages and paper after paper after paper of sketches and paintings, playing with acrylics and oils and pastels and inks. It helps, God it helps, but when the creativity goes away for periods of time he feels devastated, like he isn’t worth anything at all.

It’s during one of these periods, when he’s staring at a blank canvas, that Stiles ventures up to the attic by himself. He doesn’t say anything, walking around Derek like he’s a wild animal or something, and just stares at the canvases. 

Derek takes a deep breath, and then he sits down with his paper and starts sketching Stiles. It feels right, the way that the charcoal moves across the page, and the lines of Stiles’s face are fascinating, his neck and his throat and his shoulders just begging to be captured on the page. 

Derek screws up, gets the perspective off, and he throws the paper away and starts on a new one. Stiles sees what he’s doing, and then he sits, and Derek pauses for a moment because Stiles is being still, and that’s something that he never does. Derek goes back to sketching, and Stiles sits still for hours without complaint, and something eases between the two of them and Derek’s not even sure what it is. 

Stiles does it again, almost two weeks later, and Derek breathes a sigh of relief to have him there, in his attic, where they can be quiet and still together. Derek draws him again, and again, and again, and Stiles sits so still, not opening his mouth once, and it’s so soothing that Derek starts to come out of his depression a little.

Two weeks later, the night before Stiles leaves on his yearly trip to Poland, Derek grabs his bicep in the kitchen in front of the entire Hale clan and drags him back up to the attic. This time, he needs to draw Stiles so that he can see him during the summer, because he’s learned that he hates the time that Stiles is away from him and he isn’t sure how to handle it. 

Stiles stays quiet, just like he always does when he’s spending time with Derek, and Derek sketches him until the moon starts to go down. Stiles looks at his watch and then he stands up. “My plane is leaving in three hours. I need to go home and pack.”

Derek nods and stands up, art supplies clattering to the floor around him. Stiles walks over and gives him a hug, which Derek sinks into, and he buries his nose in Stiles’s neck and just breathes him in. 

That summer sucks, if Derek’s being honest. He distracts himself with Jackson and Boyd and Danny and flat out refuses to talk to Laura about Stiles, although she keeps asking him questions. Cora’s pissed at him, because she’s still hung up on her Harry Potter/Anathema Device/Willow Rosenberg fantasy boyfriend of Stiles that she’s swearing up and down that he’s trying to steal from her, until finally Derek loses his temper and informs his family that all they do is Stiles sits still and Derek draws him. They never even talk. 

Weirdly, this upsets Laura even more while Cora calms down. Laura waits until the rest of the family is asleep before she ventures into his room, looking at him like he’s going to attack her.

“Stiles never spends time with people when he’s not talking,” Laura says, her face grumpy.

“Laura, literally, we haven’t said a word to each other,” Derek starts to insist again.

“I know, and that’s what pisses me off. I know you’re telling the truth.”

“Then why are you upset?” Derek asks, slouching on his window sill.

“Because Stiles feels like he has to change for you.”

Derek scowls out the window. “Stiles hasn’t changed for me, Laura. You ever thought that might be who he really is, and sometimes he just needs different people so he can be himself?”

“You can’t know that,” Laura says. “I’ve known him for years, you can’t know that after spending just a few times with him up in the attic.”

Derek glares at his sister, and then he drags her up to the attic, where she can see the hundreds of pictures that he’s drawn of Stiles.

“Derek,” Laura whispers, picking up some of his better ones. “Derek, I didn’t know.”

“What?” Derek asks her.

“I didn’t know you liked him like that,” Laura’s got tears in her eyes. 

“What?” Derek asks again, wanting to deny it. It’s a stupid play, and he knows it, knows acting like he has no idea what Laura’s talking about isn’t going to get him anything but her pissed at him, but Laura’s really upset. 

“He’s mine, Derek, he’s my friend,” she’s got tears rolling down her face. “You can’t have him because I was friends with him first. He understands me.”

Derek’s torn. On the one hand, Laura, his twin and oldest friend, no secrets or questions of loyalty or doubts. On the other hand, well, Stiles. Stiles is nothing but secrets and uncertainty and desire. “Okay.”

“What?” It’s Laura’s turn to ask.

“Okay, Laura,” Derek says and he smiles as he feels like he’s being torn in half. He picks up all the pictures of Stiles and reverently stacks them into a pile. He shoves them into a folder he’s made out of two pieces of posterboard a little harshly, takes a deep breath, and hands it over to Laura. Then he walks out of his attic and shifts so that he can run into the woods, up the hill that lets him see the window to Stiles’s bedroom even though he can never see in, and he doesn’t come home until morning.

He dates a lot of girls, makes out with them and feels them up and it’s nice. They’re warm and they want him, and by the time summer is over he’s made out with half of their class. He doesn’t look for Stiles when school starts, doesn’t let himself wonder over the new tattoos or even glance at him when they pass in the halls. He isn’t home when Stiles is there, and he plays Lacrosse in the fall. He ignores Stiles over winter break even though he’s there all the time, since his dad is almost never home because he’s dating someone. During spring, Derek plays on the baseball team and hangs out with Jackson and Danny and Boyd. He goes through girlfriends like tissue paper; sometimes he doesn’t even remember their names when they’re breaking up. He ignores his depression because he has to, has to keep living, has to keep going because stopping will mean something bad will happened and he just doesn’t know what to do to make it go away. 

Laura and Lydia start dating, and with Stiles attached at their hip it’s like nothing has changed between the three of them. Derek’s walked in with the girls making out on the couch and Stiles curled in the family room arm chair watching TV or sleeping too many times to count and he tries not to let it drive him absolutely insane. Stiles is just always, constantly alone and it hurts Derek to see him never dating anyone, never being interested in anyone, never having someone of his own. It would be so much easier to ignore Stiles if he was just occasionally in someone else’s arms. 

Stiles is sleeping on the armchair one night in the Spring that Derek comes home early. He knows Lydia and Laura are busy with each other, so he lets himself just stare at Stiles, since he hasn’t been able to all year. His eyelashes brush the tips of his cheekbones, and Derek’s fingers clench with the urge to touch them. His tee-shirt is still baggy and loose, but Derek knows that Stiles’s body has put on more muscle but is still lean and wiry. His arms are wrapped around his legs as he sleeps, and Derek wants to know why Stiles always sleeps in such a tight ball, wonders if his body doesn’t get stiff from not stretching out all night. He wonders if Stiles holds himself so tightly because he thinks no one else will do it.

Derek realizes that Laura and Lydia have stopped kissing and are now staring at him, so Derek turns around and leaves the living room as quickly as he can. Lydia looked like she wanted to ask him questions, but Laura looked confused. He doesn’t quite know why she looked confused, but in any case it’s better, far better for him to leave as quickly as possible, than to be confronted by her or Lydia.

After Stiles and Lydia go home, Laura sneaks into Derek’s bedroom. She hasn’t done that since they were in sixth grade, so Derek puts aside the comic book that he was reading and stares at her.

“You really like him, don’t you?” she asks.

“Laura,” Derek groans, spearing his fingers through his hair and glaring at her.

“I just… I thought that you were just going to use him, like an experiment. Then you started using all those other girls, and I thought that all you wanted was sex, and… you really like him.”

Derek doesn’t say anything, but he does get off his bed and put his shoes on. 

“Don’t run away, Derek, talk to me about this. Do you like Stiles?”

Derek doesn’t look at her for a long time. “He’s all I think about,” he whispers, but he knows that she can hear him because she’s a werewolf. Derek leaves her in his bedroom and runs, runs through the woods and up one of the taller hills, where he can stare at the light that shines through the curtain of Stiles’s bedroom in the valley below. 

He doesn’t stay out all night; he has baseball in the morning and he hates being tired for that. He gets into his room and locks it, putting on some music so that his family can’t hear him beating off so loudly. He never makes a lot of noise, and his entire family is made up of wolves so he can’t hide it from them, but he is a seventeen year old boy and he just watched the love of his life, sleeping in his family room, and his eyelashes were so dark against the paleness of his skin. 

Derek will sometimes think about fucking Stiles, sometimes he thinks about what it would be like with Stiles’s calves wrapped around his neck as he fucked into him, his cock dragging against Derek’s belly, his teeth sinking into plump lips so that he can keep it quiet. Derek imagines kissing Stiles and swallowing his cries, keeping them to himself so that he didn’t have to share with his nosy family. 

Tonight though, Derek thinks about just kissing him, touching him, dragging his fingers through the hair on his arms and his legs. He dreams about grabbing fistfuls of Stiles’s hair so that he can tilt his head back, licking into his mouth and letting his lips slide against the softness of Stiles’s. He wants it, wants to feel Stiles’s long elegant hands sweeping over his body stroking his skin and gripping his shoulders and his ass. Derek wants it so bad that he’s coming from the thought of Stiles’s hands on him, and he comes so hard he falls asleep afterwards. 

When he wakes up, though, he sees that Laura has left all those pictures of Stiles that he had drawn what feels like so long ago on the end of his bed. 

Derek thinks about it at baseball practice, thinks about what it might mean and if maybe, possibly Stiles might be interested in him. He thinks that it’s possible, but not after this year, after the way that Derek blew him off and completely ignored his existence. It’s too little, too late from Laura.

He lets himself start drawing again. He goes back to the attic and opens up the windows and dusts the place. He throws out some of the tubes of oil paints that he’s left up there because they’re dried out and crackly. He takes his Camaro and goes to the local art store, buys a whole new stock of primary colors and a couple of secondaries, and then he locks himself in the attic once he’s back at the house.

It comes back, the creativity and the art just flow through his body and he loves it. He can’t believe that anything can feel this good, watching the things that are in his head laid out on paper. It takes him a while to remember all the tricks that he had figured out, the reasons why he had needed different brushes and knives and turpentine and cat litter and all of the things that go along with painting, but after a few minutes it’s like stretching. 

Derek lets himself look at Stiles in the halls of the school on Monday, and he lets himself get caught looking. Stiles looks confused, pissed and hurt and very, very devastated for some reason. Derek almost walks over to him, needing to hold him and tell him that everything is okay now, but he doesn’t know how to do it or even if it would be welcoming.

He knows that Stiles is studying him at lunch, and he looks over a few times to find his bright honey colored eyes on him. He smiles every single time that he makes eye contact with him, a reflex, a lack of control, a necessity of action. 

Jackson notices it first, and because Jackson is such a douchebag he feels no compunctions about bringing it up. “You finally gonna try to get into his pants?”

“What?” Derek asks him, shocked.

“It’s not like we didn’t notice how you moon after him. You cut yourself off cold turkey after last year and you think we didn’t notice? How retarded do you think we are?” Jackson laughs a little.

“I’m glad,” Danny says, “it was boring to watch you go through all the girls in the school. Everyone knew you wanted Stiles, and they were just throwing themselves at you,” Danny leans back in the plastic cafeteria seat. “Monogamy is going to look good on you. When’s your first date?”

“I… haven’t even talked to him yet,” Derek says.

Boyd rolls his eyes. “This Friday then?”

Jackson snorts. He gets up and walks across the cafeteria, which gets a little quieter when he stops at the table where Laura, Scott, Lydia, Stiles, and Allison are sitting. Derek isn’t even quite sure who Allison is, but he knew that she was hanging around his sister’s group, even though she never came over to the Hale House like everyone else. Jackson says something that Laura answers, and Stiles ducks his head and stares at his lap. Derek is too busy studying the line in Stiles’s neck to notice that Jackson walking back over to their table and sitting down with a smirk on his face.

“Party at my house this Friday,” Jackson announces. “I invited your sister and her friends.”

Derek stares at Jackson, shocked that he is trying to hook him up with Stiles. “Why?”

“You’re exactly one third of the reason I don’t hate Beacon Hills, assmunch,” Jackson says. For Jackson, that was like a declaration of unreserved love and loyalty, and it makes Derek laugh.

The cafeteria stops and stares, and Derek feels self-conscious about laughing. He glares at everyone so that they stop looking at him though, and soon things are back to normal.

Derek doesn’t know what to do, now that Laura has basically given him Stiles back. He doesn’t even know if Stiles has ever actually liked him at all, and he isn’t stupid enough to think that just because he can’t stop thinking about Stiles that Stiles has ever thought about Derek that way. Statistically speaking, it was highly improbable that Stiles was even gay. 

Wednesday night, Derek gets home from practice to find Stiles eating with his family, again. He is so pleased that he is allowed to look at him now that it took him a few minutes to figure out what they are talking about.

“I can stay at my aunt’s house, and she only lives ten minutes from campus, so I don’t have to worry about rent or anything,” Stiles says.

“Are you going to have problems with the language? I know you spend every summer there, but that’s just conversational Polish,” Mrs. Hale asks.

“They do some classes in English, but it won’t take me long to learn the rest of the language,” Stiles says, shoveling more food into his mouth. “I’ve already been getting some private tutoring at BHCC, and the professor there lived and taught in Warsaw for ten years. He said I’m doing fine and I don’t have anything to worry about.”

“You should just finish out high school with the rest of us,” Laura grumps. “I don’t like the thought of you going away for so long.”

Stiles smiles at her. “It’ll be good for me. I’ll be able to graduate in three years because of my AP classes, and I’ll get to study magic with my family. Plus, everything will be paid for, so I don’t have to graduate with tons of student loans that I’ll never be able to pay off.”

“You’re going to Poland for college?” Derek asks, his heart sinking.

“Yeah,” Stiles answers, “I have enough credits to graduate in December, so I’ll be starting Spring Semester in Poland,” he’s staring at Derek like he didn’t quite know what to do with him.

Stiles was leaving. Intellectually, Derek knew that Stiles was going to attend college, but Derek always thought that he would go to whatever school Stiles was going to, or one close by. He thought Stiles would go to Stanford or Berkley, and that Derek would go to whatever UC was close by. He never thought about Stiles going to Poland, never thought Stiles would be so far out of his reach. 

Laura is giving Derek sympathetic looks, and Derek glares at her. He can’t believe that she gave Stiles back, or gave him permission to like Stiles, just months before he’s planning on leaving the country. He doesn’t want her pity or her apology, he doesn’t want anything but an opportunity to talk Stiles into staying in the States, preferably California, and most preferably somewhere that Derek could keep him near to him always. He eats his food quickly and goes back to his attic, because he can’t be around then. He wants too many things.

“You mad at me?” Stiles asks from the attic doorway.

“No,” Derek says, sketching with charcoal.

Stiles comes in and sits down on the floor across from where Derek was sprawled. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Derek decides to act ignorant. 

“I… you’re acting strange. Stranger. Than usual.”

Derek doesn’t know what to say, so he keeps shading in the same area on his page.

“Derek,” Stiles says, and Derek almost couldn’t stand the sound of his name on Stiles’s lips. It was almost too much like one of the million fantasies he’d had about Stiles. “We really need to talk, man.”

Derek sighs. “There’s too many things to say, so there’s no point.”

Stiles puts his hand over Derek’s, “I don’t know how to fix it if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Derek looks up to just stare at Stiles. He hasn’t gotten to see him this close since the summer before their first year of high school, and he almost whimpers at the changes on his face. There’s no baby fat anyore, just high cheekbones and a pouting lower lip, long black lashes framing amber eyes, a tilt tip nose and dark moles accentuating pale skin. He’s everything that Derek’s ever wanted, perfect in so many ways. 

Stiles is staring straight back at him though, and Derek notices that he keeps looking at Derek’s mouth. His lips feel dry all of a sudden, and he quickly licks them, and Stiles isn’t trying to hide the fact that he’s staring straight at Derek’s mouth then. Derek can smell Stiles better now, and he can see that Stiles’s eyes look blacker, so he leans forward incrementally. 

Stiles backs up and looks away, swallowing hard. He stands up and walks out of the room without saying another word, and Derek knows that he should stop him and explain, but he doesn’t know what words to use so he just watches as Stiles walks out of his attic.

The rest of the week passes in a blur. Derek fucked up, he knows that, but he can’t stop replaying the scene in his head, analyzing every single thing that he did wrong. He knows that he should have explained to Stiles, knows that he should have told him what was going on inside of his head, and he knows he finally has a chance when he gets to Jackson’s party.

The house is filled with people. Jackson’s parents might or might not be there, Derek doesn’t know, but there are so many teenagers and lots of the boys and some of the girls are walking around with flasks. A couple of kids in the backyard are smoking something that smells green and pungent, and kind of like blueberries at the same time. Derek walks around some more, looking for Stiles, and then Jackson, Boyd, and Danny grab him and push him into a closet. He doesn’t fight back because he’s afraid he’ll hurt them, but when he turns around to open the door back up he finds out he’s locked in there.

“Derek?” he hears Stiles’s voice.

“Stiles?” Derek turns around, and as his eyes adjust to the light he sees Stiles slouching on the floor of the closet. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Fine, just… I’ve been locked in here for a long time. I thought that was why they invited me, so that they could lock me in the closet like assholes do… but why would they lock you in here?”

Derek slouches down the other wall, not really minding when his legs tangle up with Stiles. “Because they didn’t lock us up in a closet, Stiles, not like that. They locked us up here together.”

“Why…” Stiles is still confused.

“Because I like you,” Derek blurts out. 

“What? Since when?” Stiles voice cracks, and it startles Derek a little bit. 

“I don’t know,” Derek says honestly. “Maybe forever.” As soon as he says it, he’s comfortable with Stiles knowing. He knows that Stiles will never do anything to hurt him, so it’s okay to talk about it. He feels safe telling Stiles this secret, even if Stiles never likes him back.

“But… you’ve had a million girlfriends this year,” Stiles protests. “Girls, all of them, every single one of them. Why would you like me?” 

Derek realizes that Stiles doesn’t trust him the same way, he can feel his panic and he can tell that Stiles thinks that he’s making fun of him. “Jesus, Stiles,” Derek curses, “I’m being honest. Laura told me to stay away from you, so I did. I had to distract myself somehow.”

“So what, did Laura change her mind?” Stiles asks, a little nervous. “She said, it’s okay if you and Stiles are friends now?”

Derek laughs a little bit, because that’s almost hilarious. “She gave me back my pictures of you,” he says. 

Stiles is squinting in the dark. Derek can see him better in the absence of almost all light, because his smell defines his boundaries and the heat from his body gives off low frequencies that Derek can almost feel. Stiles takes a deep breath, and then illumination from some unknown source fills the closet. “I have to see you when you’re saying… what are you saying?” Stiles sounds afraid to ask.

Derek leans forward so that Stiles can see him better. “I’m saying that I’m in love with you, and have been for a very long time. My friends just thought that they could give us an opportunity to talk about it. They weren’t making fun of you, they were trying to give me a chance with you.”

Derek can see Stiles thinking, and he takes the opportunity to see that the light is coming from Stiles. It’s like he’s shining underneath his clothing, and Derek desperately wants to know this secret. It’s not a harsh light, but it’s tinged with scarlets and golds and it feels warm to look at. “You like me?” Stiles whispers, and it sounds like he’s afraid to believe it.

Derek smiles at Stiles, “If you don’t like me back, I’ll understand. It’ll take me a while to get over it, so it’s probably a good thing you’re moving to Poland for college in less than a year, but…” Derek takes a deep breath and tries not to get distracted with how Stiles smells, “it feels better, telling you. Now that you know, I feel so much better.”

Stiles waits, like he thinks that Derek is just going to start laughing and say, ‘Kidding! God, the look on your face!’ and then make fun of Stiles afterwards with all of his friends. So Derek leans back against the wall with a smile on his face, because he’s told Stiles the truth and he feels so much lighter because of it. He’s waiting for Stiles’s response, but before he can get one the door opens again. 

“I can’t believe they locked you in here,” Laura gripes. “God, are they freshmen?”

Derek is a little disappointed that his time with Stiles has been interrupted, but Laura drags her brother and Stiles out of the closet (and that kind of makes Derek chuckle a little) and then she drags Stiles away from Derek so they can get some snacks. 

Or drinks, apparently. The next time Derek sees Stiles, he’s obviously drunk. He’s a quiet drunk, which completely surprises Derek, and he’s sitting on the back porch with a cigarette, again, that surprises Derek, and watching as Derek is hanging out with Jackson, Boyd, and Danny. Stiles’s eyes get big as he sees Danny kissing some boy next to them, and girls come up and flirt with Jackson and Boyd, and Derek just looks over to see Stiles sitting on the porch by himself. He can’t stop watching the way that smoke comes out of Stiles’s pursed lips, or the way that the flare of the cigarette briefly lights up Stiles’s eyes. He thinks it’s the sexiest thing ever, and Derek feels his body trying to respond.

No one notices when Derek steps further back in the shadows of Jackson’s backyard, through the back fence and into the woods. No one but Stiles, and Derek can smell the whiskey and smoke on top of the scent of Stiles. 

He walks up to Stiles in the woods, leaning against a tree. “You really like me?” Stiles asks him.

“Yes,” Derek replies, letting all the time in the world settle on their shoulders. “I really do.”

“You really aren’t fucking with me? Because that would be a shitty thing to lie about, Derek. It’s hard to believe that you feel anything at all for me when we’ve barely talked to each other for years, when we’ve just been shadows in a room together. We’ve skirted the periphery of each other’s presence for years.”

“So the question remains, Stiles, how do you feel about me?” Derek is starting to think that he already knows.

Stiles leans forward, smoke and alcohol and the wild smell of magic, and he slowly lays his top lip against Derek’s. It’s a strange sort of non-kiss, but then Stiles’s eyes close and he inhales Derek. He slides his top lip against Derek’s, and Derek can feel the movement down his body, and he reaches out to pull Stiles’s body against his as Stiles opens his mouth. Their lips meet and slowly open to each other, and Stiles is a face holder when he kisses. It’s so perfect, to feel Stiles’s hands on his face, and Derek traces his shoulder blades down his lithe body, cups the surprisingly firm mounds of Stiles’s ass, and gasps as Stiles’s legs wrap around his waist. Derek holds onto Stiles by his thighs, and their kisses are smooth and wet, rising and falling like the sea. 

Derek’s hand slides back up Stiles’s back, and he holds his neck as he lowers them to the forest floor, his body slotting between Stiles’s legs. Stiles is hard against him, hard and large enough that Derek can feel him between their jeans, he can press his own erection back into Stiles’s as he kisses Stiles’s neck. He loves the way that Stiles smells, buries his face in the junction between neck and shoulder, bites it softly before lightly sucking so that he can pull the salt of his skin into his mouth. He tastes so good, and the noises he’s making are heady. 

“Stiles?” Derek hears Laura’s voice, and the two boys pause, gasping into each other’s mouths. “Stiles, we’re about to go… oh.”

Derek and Stiles look up at Laura, and Derek grins when Stiles’s face turns red. They get off the forest floor and stand up, and Derek takes Stiles’s hand. “I’ll take him home, Laura,” Derek says.

Laura nods, and her face looks kind of pinched, but the three of them walk out of the woods together. 

Derek doesn’t even ask Stiles if he wants to go home. He takes him up to his room and sits on his bed as Stiles looks around for a minute, and then takes his clothes off and gets under the covers. 

Stiles pauses for just a moment before he strips and climbs into bed with him.


	2. Chapter 2

They decide not to change any of their plans. Stiles was still going to Poland for college, but he was going to come back to America for grad school. They fit in as much time as they could together in between. No one ever saw either of them without the other, and their parents just smiled when they spent the night at each other’s houses three or four times a week.

Stiles let Derek see his tattoos. Both of his shoulder blades were covered, and part of his chest and his upper right bicep. The tattoos skirted around his left hipbone and crawled up his right leg. Stiles told Derek they were just words: fire, water, lightening, basic elements on his upper body and below, protection, speed, growth, projection, combustion. Derek didn’t understand what those meant, but Stiles said after this summer he could show Derek. He wasn’t allowed to use his magic without supervision, because things like his first summer in Poland could happen. This summer, he was strong enough to take some of the tests, even though his cousins weren’t eligible until they were in their twenties. Derek finds out that they don’t taste differently than the rest of Stiles, but he has to double and triple check a couple of times a day to make sure. 

Derek was proud to learn his Stiles was considered abnormally strong and powerful. Stiles said he didn’t like it particularly because sometimes they looked at him like he was going to hurt them, and he already had more magic scars than most of his teachers. He obeyed the rules to the letter and studied harder than everyone else there, but they still treated him like a particularly feral beast. 

During the summer, while Stiles was gone, Derek and Laura started their own training. They spent time in Boston, with an older Pack, being taught some of the more singular things that werewolves could do. Because Stiles was graduating early Laura was going to be Salutatorian, and she already had plans to attend Harvard Law with Lydia. The Pack there was very welcoming to Laura and they were excited about her moving in with them next summer.

Derek didn’t like the East Coast. There were too many people and it smelled funny. His parents hoped he would acclimate to the surroundings, but Derek really couldn’t and it was terrible. So, for the last week of summer, Derek and Laura are sent to the second largest pack in the United States: the Cajuns of New Orleans.

Most wolves didn’t like the Cajun Pack, or even New Orleans. It was too hot and they were too loud, too much exclusion of outsiders. Laura hates it, but Derek absolutely adores it. The Cajuns seem to love Derek too, and their brand of supernatural magic was more informal that the Boston pack. It focused more on healing and balancing nature than mind-control and manipulation. Derek loves it so much that he wants to attend school there, and the New Orleans pack are more than happy to sponsor him while he attends the University of New Orleans. 

Stiles meets up with Derek the moment he gets out of the car from the airport. They hug and kiss each other, and it’s really hard for Derek to let Stiles go long enough for him to greet the rest of the Hale Family. 

Stiles’s new tattoos cover the length of his left arm and the rest of the way up his right leg. Derek tasted all of them, just to catalogue their flavor and texture. Stiles laughs at him but he doesn’t really mind. They spent the last few days before Senior year making love in all the ways that their bodies would allow.

Stiles also takes Derek out to the woods and shows him his magic. He grows pine trees and patches of clover before Derek’s eyes. He makes it rain, a warm summer shower, and freezes one of his trees before carefully setting everything back the way he found it.

Derek loves watching Stiles show off for him. He tells him so, and Stiles blushes such a pretty red that Derek has to kiss it off his face right away. 

School starts, and time travels way too quickly. Stiles is always in the stands at Derek’s Lacrosse games and Derek always goes to Stiles’s Cross Country meets. They eat lunch together, ignoring everyone else in the cafeteria, and at night, they sleep in each other’s arms.

Halloween comes and although it’s a full moon and Derek should have been running with his pack, he spends it with Stiles instead. Stiles hands out candy at the door and then goes back inside to kiss Derek, who sits in the shadows and only slightly shifts.

During college week, when Seniors were encouraged to visit colleges instead of attending classes, Derek and Stiles fly to New Orleans while Laura and Lydia fly out to Boston. Derek introduces Stiles to the Cajun pack, who in turn welcome Stiles like a long-lost son. They hinted strongly that Stiles could attend UNO like Derek or even Tulane, when Derek bragged about Stiles’s grades, but Stiles tells them about his family’s preference for University of Warsaw like his mother and they all understand that. Family was the most important thing to Southerners, and even more so for a werewolf pack.

Derek does smile his ass off when Stiles asks their opinion on Tulane’s graduate school, though. 

Thanksgiving rolls around much too soon, but it’s different this year because Lydia and her mother come. Laura proposes to Lydia at dinner, so Lydia’s mother is brought into the Hale Pack. Lydia’s father is spending Thanksgiving in LA with his new girlfriend and he wasn’t a big part of her life anyway, so it was actually a very positive experience for Mrs. Martin. She reacts surprisingly to the shared secret and tells Lydia that her grandmother had actually been some sort of shape-shifter anyway. Mrs. Martin had never believed the old family stories until Laura shifted in front of her, and then she clapped her hands in delight and cried that she had never believed her mother’s stories.

Stiles cooks the meal again, and Derek glares every time someone mentions it would be the last time for a few years that they would eat like this because Poland wouldn’t have a Thanksgiving break. Stiles just wraps Derek in a hug every time it happens, and Derek doesn’t want to let him go. 

The boys sequester themselves in Derek’s attic as much as possible after Thanksgiving. They spend time with their friends, but they lose a lot of sleep because they don’t want to waste a minute of time together. Derek draws while Stiles does his homework, and finalizes his Passport and Student Visa. They make love every day and whisper promises into each other’s ears.

Stiles graduates, and Derek wants to burn his diploma at the same time that he’s proud of it. There isn’t a ceremony for half-year grads, just a trip to the principal’s office to pick up their paperwork and a handshake to all three of them that are graduating. Stiles gives his diploma to Derek, who hangs it on the wall of his bedroom.

Stiles almost doesn’t leave the Hale House for the rest of Winter Break. He goes back and forth between their houses a few times to make sure everything is packed, but other than that he and Derek don’t leave each other’s sides. 

That Christmas, Stiles’s dad gives them both matching laptops, already Skype enabled. Derek’s parents give Laura and Derek the deeds to the old cabins behind their house, with Lydia’s and Stiles’s names written on them.

Derek and Laura start school again, and a week later Stiles flies to Poland. Derek spends the evening before Stiles leaves with their families, and then when they go to bed he spends the rest of the night slowly and sweetly rocking into Stiles’s warm body, tasting his skin and tears and sweat. He doesn’t want to forget a moment of that night, and he doesn’t for the rest of his life.

While Stiles is gone, Derek keeps himself busy by fixing up their cabin. It’s kind of decrepit and in some places is literally falling apart, but he works on it with his dad and sometimes little Isaac even helps out. What really surprises him is that Jackson shows up and is willing to get dirty. It might or might not have something to do with Cora becoming absolutely and clearly gorgeous after a shopping trip with Lydia, or the fact that Cora becomes incredibly popular even though she’s a member of the Freak Crowd at their school. 

Cora's more interested in music, and Derek shows up to her concerts like the proud older brother he is. Cora's band isn’t any better than any other garage band, but Derek thinks it’s the greatest thing ever. 

Stiles comes home at the end of his semester and moves back into his dad’s house. He’s taking a few courses on-line for summer session, just his basics so he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time studying. That makes Derek happy. He goes to Derek’s graduation, and they celebrate with their friends.

Stiles helps with fixing up their cabin, and by the middle of summer they move in together. Lydia and Laura move to Boston early, and Derek and Stiles go along to help them move into their apartment. They don’t stay very long; the Boston pack is fascinated with Stiles and it makes them both uncomfortable.

Derek and Stiles spend another month in Beacon Hills. They go to Cora’s concerts with Jackson, who is going to Stanford in the fall with Boyd. Danny comes over with his flavor of the week a few times, and the boys have a great time together.

Stiles goes to New Orleans with Derek, who is going to move in with a family from the Cajun pack. They’re an older, childless couple who is thrilled to be getting a temporary son. They mistake Stiles as Derek’s friend at first, and it takes them a while to process that Derek’s gay, but after they figure it out they’re still warm and accepting. Mrs. Thibideaux immediately gets on her computer to Google “So Your Son is Gay” and Stiles answers a lot of Mr. Thibideaux’s questions as they unpack Derek’s room.

They take Derek and Stiles to a gay bar that’s been open in one form or another since 1770 in New Orleans, and Mrs. Thibideaux speaks in Cajun to the owner about how she expects her son to be treated. Derek gets shy, but Stiles keeps talking to the Thibideauxs and by the time he leaves for Warsaw he tells Derek he’s in good hands.

Derek loves New Orleans, loves the art program at his school and the chicory coffee and beignets from Café Dumonde, loves the ridiculous amounts of amazingly good food that everyone from the pack is always feeding him. He loves running with the pack through the bayou, and he even semi-adopts a pet alligator that Mr. Thibideaux saves from a trap that he names Rufus. He and Stiles catch up with each other on Skype at least three times a week, except for when mid-terms come around.

Derek goes home for Thanksgiving. Lydia’s talking about transferring to MIT and Laura’s very supportive, even though Derek can tell she feels responsible that she talked Lydia into law school when everyone knew that she preferred working with numbers. Laura is learning to control herself, largely in thanks to her experience with the Boston pack. Laura realizes that she has a control problem and they’re helping her reign it in.

Jackson shows up on Cora’s arm, and the Sheriff comes in through the door by himself. They try to cook the dinner, but they end up ordering pizza instead, because as much as Derek tries to claim its Cajun style, none of them can make themselves actually eat charcoal.

Derek stays in his and Stiles’s cabin, and its lonely but at the same time he’s comforted by the fact it belongs to them. He Skypes Stiles and they say sappy things to each other before they get off together, and then Thanksgiving is over and Derek goes back to New Orelans. 

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas drags, but Derek fills it with studying for finals and eating. He helps Mr. Thibideaux around the house and pesters Mrs. Thibideaux into teaching him how to cook. Soon, he can do a decent jambalaya and amazing cornbread, filled with cheese and onions and broccoli. He sits in on a pack meeting once, because there’s a land dispute between the larger Cajun pack and the smaller, but ridiculously rich, Creole pack. They hate outsiders more than the Cajuns do, not because there’s no family ties but because they just aren’t as good as the Creoles are. Derek’s not particularly fond of them, either; he thinks they’re pretentious and too business-like for werewolves, but one of the Cajun betas whispers each of their net worths to Derek during the meeting and he almost throws up when he realizes how much money each of them represent.

One of the Creole betas seems interested in him, and even after he tells her he’s already got a boyfriend she’s not deterred. Her father is the Alpha and she alone is worth seven million dollars, so halfway through the meeting the Creole Alpha asks for Derek to be transferred to his pack.

The Cajun werewolves stiffen up, but Mr. Thibideaux answers for them all. “Derek is a member of the Hale Pack, and he has been entrusted to us by his mate. We have no authority to transfer membership of Derek.”

“His mate?” the Alpha scoffs, “He bears no mate scent or mark.”

“His mate is not a wolf,” Mrs. Thibideaux says.

“Then they aren’t actually mates. Derek is free to mate with my daughter,” the Creole Alpha states.

“No,” the Cajun Alpha stands up, and Derek swears he can almost hear her bones creaking, “you see, I would not take on his mate, even with my entire pack behind me. Derek is here as a gesture of trust, and we will not break that tie. Your daughter is free to speak with Derek, of course, but I would not advise forcibly taking him.”

Derek thinks this conversation is over after the Creole pack goes home, but Mr. Thibideaux disagrees. There are a few more pack meetings before all is said and done, and then, finally, Derek goes home for Christmas.

Derek is talking to his mother in the kitchen about mating marks when Stiles walks into the kitchen, which means that he has to go over the whole story again. Stiles smiles a little and teases Derek that he has to save his princess from the evil clutches of an Alpha’s daughter, but Derek shows some self-control by not fucking all the sass out of Stiles until that night.

Sex with Stiles makes everything worth it: the long distances between them, the days spent worrying that he’s safe, the hours spent alone. If Derek hadn’t been forced to stay away from him for so long during high school he isn’t sure he would have been able to do this for very much longer. It’s Hell without Stiles. 

Mrs. Hale informs Derek that he and Stiles won’t be able to give each other the mating mark because there isn’t a way for one of them to get pregnant. Stiles is fine with that, but it makes Derek uncomfortable. As a compromise, Stiles uses his magic to tattoo a triskele in the middle of Derek’s back. Derek loves it, spends a few hours in the mirror staring at it, and shows it off by walking around shirtless as much as possible. His family teases him about it something fierce, but they’re all pretty impressed that Stiles has marked a werewolf. 

Cora’s band is only booked for one show while Derek and Stiles are home. Derek is shocked that there are twice as many people there than at the last show. Her band’s music is a lot better than it was, so maybe it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. 

Lydia is officially going to MIT in the spring, and her mother comes to Christmas dinner in a new sweatshirt. Lydia and Laura give everyone sweatshirts from their schools, and everyone giggles about it when they start fighting about who is going to wear which sweatshirt. Laura insists that Stiles wear Harvard’s, so Derek wear’s Lydia’s MIT sweatshirt to make things fair. Apparently, Harvard and MIT have a healthy rivalry in Boston, and Lydia and Laura both get teased to Hell for being engaged to someone from the school across the river, as they’re referred to.

Derek gives Stiles a leather bound set of Harry Potter books that he did himself. Each book is finely tooled and the stitches are all hand sewn. Mr. Thibideaux had taught him how and Derek is really pleased with the results.

Stiles laughs a little and presents a simple journal to Derek, with a matching one that Derek sees Stiles has filled with nonsense from his daily life. There’s a metal placeholder in it, and Stiles tells Derek that if he ever needs him to hold it in his hand and say his name, but not to do it unless its truly an emergency. 

Stiles works around the cabin a lot. Derek can’t see what he’s doing, but there seems to be a decent amount of flailing involved so he leaves him to it.

He also sleeps a lot, like he’s absolutely exhausted. Derek worries about him. He still goes out with him for New Year’s, but they don’t stay out much past one like all of their friends. Derek doesn’t like that; he doesn’t like that Stiles is so tired all the time and it makes him worry because Stiles won’t tell him why. 

Derek flies back to New Orleans, and Spring Semester is easier. He gets his assignments in on time, although he notices after the business of Beacon Hills he’s not really making any friends. It worries Derek because he knows most wolves use college time to make alliances with other packs.

He tells the Thibideauxs how worried he is that he might not be doing things correctly; his parents still talk with their friends from college a few times a year.

The Thibideauxs reassure him that everything is fine. Most young werewolves are extremely territorial and Derek is intimidating because even as a human he’s large. Derek hadn’t noticed, but working on the cabin with his dad, playing sports, and then working around the Thibideaux’s house has really made him bulk up, and most of his body is harshly defined. The betas his age in the Cajun pack might just be worried that he’s a threat to their Alpha, but as soon as they realize that he isn’t they’ll get closer.

Derek gets his first showing with all the other freshmen. He gets to display one piece, and he chooses one from his high school portfolio, an oil pastel, and remakes it with stained glass. He likes making the glass: taking the chemicals that are highly toxic and mixing them and pouring them into sheets that he has to fire up, breaking hundreds on hundreds of them before he gets a satisfactory finished product. It’s a swirl of colors that are all Stiles: gold and black and red and cream. Derek loves it, and he doesn’t even have to explain it to Stiles because as soon as he shows it to him over Skype Stiles blushes and his pink mouth drops open. Derek has to escape to his studio, the top floor of the art building with a space that’s all Derek’s. Stiles mouth is just made for sex, and Derek wants to watch it when he’s getting off.

Strangely enough, it’s only the younger wolves that come to the art exhibit. Derek leaves the show with two of them: Remy and Luke Reboulet. They’re twins and exactly Derek’s age. They take business classes at NOLA. They end up hanging out a lot, going to the bar and a few clubs. Both of them are straight, so Derek never worries about them hitting on him, and they teach Derek how to dance. They declare that every man needs to know how to dance. Derek’s really hesitant at first, but his natural athleticism and grace carry him through, and soon enough he can Texas Two Step and dance dirty Cajun dances with the best of them. 

It’s a good thing that they’re with Derek a lot of the time at that point, because Clara, the daughter of the Creole Alpha, finds them at a bar. She tries to flirt with Derek, and he tries to ignore her and that just doesn’t go over very well at all. If Remy and Luke hadn’t been there, Derek’s pretty sure that Clara would have arranged something to where the Cajun pack would have had to hand Derek over to the Creoles or declare war. 

Derek, Remy, and Luke go to the Thibideaux house immediately after, and they call the Alpha over. She cackles like a mad woman when they tell her what happened, and advises Derek to tell his little mage boyfriend about it. 

Derek waits two days before he calls Stiles. He doesn’t know how to tell him, doesn’t want Stiles to think that he did anything to encourage Clara’s attention, but it turns out that he was worrying for nothing. Stiles understands and tells him to keep the silver bookmark that he got for Christmas on him at all times.

A week later, Derek uses it.

Remy and Luke have been instructed to accompany Derek to his car and everywhere else on campus. That night they are being loud because Derek is teaching them about Lacrosse, and they are tossing the ball back and forth between Derek explaining the rules and the history of the game. 

Remy is the first one to notice them, and Derek and Luke immediately get quiet. They are surrounded by six of the Creoles, and their white skin glows in the street light.

“Derek,” Clara smiles at him.

“Clara,” Derek greets her, but he isn’t smiling.

“Derek, this is the last time I’m going to ask you,” Clara’s eyes are empty, and they disturb Derek by how much they remind him of Kate dissing him his sophomore year of high school. “Why don’t you come out for a drink with me?”

“I have a boyfriend, thanks,” Derek says, sliding his hand into the pocket of his leather coat. He clutches the bookmark because it makes him feel better.

“Where is he?” Clara asks, “I’ve never seen him before. Are you making him up?”

Four of the wolves lunge suddenly, grabbing Remy and Luke. The Cajun wolves are much larger, and they are used to physical labor so they are more built than the Creole wolves, who are built to be office workers.

“Let them go, they have nothing to do with this,” Derek says, looking startled at his foster-pack.

“I like that,” Clara says, “You’re so protective. You’re perfect. You’d make such a good mate, and you’re a pureblood. There’s not a single thing wrong with you other than your need to lie about having a boyfriend, but I can fix that.”

“My boyfriend’s name is Stiles,” Derek says, unable to think of another way to fit his name into the conversation subtly, “He’s in Warsaw, and I don’t want anyone else. Find a new wolf to stalk.”

Even though it is a clear night, thunder rents through the air. The wolves freeze, staring at the sky. They can feel that something is off in the atmosphere, the smell of ozone hanging heavy in the humidity of the South.

“Stiles isn’t a name,” Clara tries to press on.

“You’re right,” Derek is shocked to hear Stiles’s voice coming from the far side of the parking lot, “It’s a nickname. It’s kind of hard to say my actual first name, especially for English speakers, so I just let people call me by the nickname. Of course,” Derek can see Stiles slowly getting closer. He is wearing a robe of deep red, so it’s hard to make him out in the shadows, “even a nickname is powerful enough to summon me from Warsaw, if spoken by the right person.”

Clara stares at Stiles. “What are you wearing?”

“Seriously, I teleport from Warsaw to New Orleans, and you want to insult my choice of attire?” Stiles walks up to Derek. “Hey baby,” and Derek wants to laugh, but he settles for a kiss.

Clara growls.

“But seriously,” Stiles looks at Clara, “Leave my boyfriend alone, get out of here, and I won’t have to hurt anyone.”

“Hurt?” Clara asks. “What are you? You smell…”

“That flavor is magic, not unlike a werewolf. Humans get that smell when they dabble in the arcane,” Stiles says, “most of the time it’s not strong enough for a werewolf to pick up. It keeps humans safe. Now, this is the last time I’m going to be nice. Let my boyfriend’s host pack go, or I will hurt you.”

“You’re just a human,” Clara scoffs.

Stiles’s eyes flash gold seconds before the four wolves holding Remy and Luke jump back off of them, yelping. “No, I said you wouldn’t be able to smell magic on a dabbler. I was trying to be nice.”

Clara looks at Stiles with wide eyes, her mouth searching for something to say.

Stiles beats her to it. “The next time a man tells you no, it doesn’t mean no until the next time he sees you, or not until you threaten his friends, or no until you put on a sad display of power. No means no. Didn’t your parents teach you that when they gave you The Talk?”

“I…” Clara starts to say.

“Leave my boyfriend alone. This is an instruction, it is not a threat. I do not want you to misunderstand me again,” Stiles slips his cloak off, revealing the tattoos on his chest and arms. He’s barefoot, and the tattoos cover both of his feet, but he is wearing a pair of yoga pants that Derek has to resist pulling off with his teeth. Stiles hands Derek his cloak and starts walking over to Clara and the six wolves with her, but she turns and runs away.

“Well, that’s good,” Stiles turns around smiling at Derek. He listens a little longer until he’s sure that the Creole pack is gone, and then he says, “You might want to catch me now because I think I’m going to pass out.” 

Derek is already back at Stiles’s side when his eyes roll back in his head and he stars falling forward. He takes Stiles, Luke, and Remy back to the Thibideaux house, where he tucks Stiles into his bed before he goes back downstairs to catch the end of Remy and Luke’s excited retelling of their experience that night. The Thibideauxs report the incident to the Alpha over the phone, and even though Derek has gone back upstairs with a bottle of water at that point he can still hear the old woman laughing over the phone. 

Derek called Stiles’s dad, who in turn put him in contact with his aunt, who told Derek to make sure Stiles stayed in bed for a week before he teleported back. She would make excuses to his professors so that he would not be marked down for his absence.

Stiles woke up two days later, and Derek scolded him for using too much power. He made Stiles stick to Cajun soups and water for another two days, but Stiles was hard to keep down. He learns that the cloak that Stiles was wearing was woven for him by his aunt, and that the weave has power and helps him. It’s like a crutch, and when he tries it on for Derek again Derek declares it sexy, the red hood and the fact that Stiles’s tattooed arms are naked in its folds, and it’s open down the front where it ends at his knees. He fucks Stiles in the cloak and nothing else, and Stiles smiles and says that love only makes his magic easier to use.

Remy and Luke kept coming by to check on Stiles, and the Alpha even came to meet him. He was still pretty weak, but he was downstairs and sitting by that point so Derek was happy about that.

They don’t get an opportunity to make love again, but Derek doesn’t mind. He hates to see Stiles go at the end of their week together, but he understands he needs to get back to school and it isn’t like he can fly in an airplane without raising suspicion. So Stiles kisses Derek one last time before promising to see him in California, and he disappears leaving the thick smell of magic behind him.

The rest of the semester goes by so quickly that Derek barely even registers the passage of time. He hops on the first flight out of New Orleans and is greeted by Stiles at the airport. 

Their cabin is surrounded by flowers and trees and vines and bushes, all sorts of growing things that are attracted to Stiles and his magic. Derek spends a lot of time lazing about the old place when he’s not working at the local art supplies store, listening to the droning of the bees and the song birds singing hymns to the Creator. Stiles sets up his laptop and takes more on-line classes in the backyard, things that require more of his concentration than the ones the year before.

They go out every weekend Derek isn’t working, and Cora’s band is playing nearby cities. Cora and Jackson are an official couple, and Derek has to give him the “If you hurt my sister,” speech, which means a lot more since Jackson has been told about werewolves at this point. 

Derek’s sophomore year of college drags on forever, nothing exciting happens and Stiles is always busy trying to prepare for graduation in the spring. Derek is invited to put three pieces in the art show at the end of the year, more than anyone else in his year. His parents fly out to see the show and to greet the Cajun pack, who are all a little in love with Derek and he with them. He loves that he never goes a Sunday without eating lunch at one of their houses, or that they never hesitate to think of him if they need help around their house or with their kids. He loves the way they treat his parents, showing them the city while he’s in class and treating them to the best N’Awlins style food.

Derek’s dad likes his pet alligator, although Rufus tends to give his mother the creeps. They really like Remy and Luke, and when they go out for dinner before Derek’s show his parents pay for all of them, even though twenty year old werewolves put away a lot of food. 

Derek gets an offer on one of his pieces at the art show, and Remy steps up to negotiate the price. Derek is a little floored when he gets eight hundred dollars for the glass vase, especially when it’s not his favorite piece, but the buyers are pleased and his dad shakes hands with them and Remy after the sale.

Stiles sends Derek pictures of his college graduation and one of the magic initiations that he has to go through. Derek really likes the pictures of the magic initiations because Stiles is in that dark red cloak, and although the other people look lots older and scarier none of them are wearing such a beautiful color. He also sends Derek a copy of his acceptance letter for Graduate School at Tulane, although his area of concentration is too blurry to read. 

Derek makes it home to Beacon Hills in time to watch Cora’s high school graduation hand in hand with Stiles. She has to leave immediately afterwards; posting a video on YouTube has gotten her a contract with a major label and the summer before she attends Berkley School of Music has her doing a small tour. 

Derek and Stiles spend most of the summer splitting time between working and putting an addition on their cabin. Stiles is making a lot of money being a consultant for the FBI, a job that he’s a little surprised at getting but not enough that Derek doesn’t suspect it had been in the works for a while. They fly out twice to catch one of Cora’s concerts and stand backstage with Jackson, who’s at all of her concerts and travels with her almost everywhere. 

Laura and Lydia visit for a week. Laura has a clerkship with a judge in Boston and Lydia has a research position at MIT, where she claims they pay her to play with numbers every day. They start planning their wedding with Mrs. Hale even though they will have to get their marriage license in another state.

Mr. Hale flies with Derek and Stiles to New Orleans at the end of the summer to go apartment hunting with Mrs. Thibideaux. It isn’t that they aren’t welcome at the Thibideaux home, it’s just that there isn’t enough room for both of them. Derek is sad that he can’t live with Rufus for the year, but the alligator seems to be adjusting well to life without Derek.

They find the last available apartment in The French Quarter, and Stiles loves the architecture and the old feel to the building despite the fact the rent worries Derek. Mrs. Thibideaux knows the landlord, and after talking with him privately he drops the monthly rent by three hundred dollars. He gives Derek a wide berth after that, which makes Stiles laugh.

Living together during the school year makes it hard to concentrate on things like school work, so Stiles set some rules about not being allowed to see each other for a few hours every day. This only lasts a few weeks, but by then they’ve calmed down a little bit and they can work in each other’s presence without tearing each other’s clothing off. 

Nothing spectacular happens that first semester, and they both get on the plane to go home for Thanksgiving. Stiles’s dad surprises everyone by showing up with Mrs. Martin, and Derek can tell that their smells are intertwined. It surprises Stiles a lot, and he confesses to Derek that he doesn’t know if he likes his dad dating. He eventually changes his mind when Mrs. Martin pulls out some heart-healthy food for the Sheriff, and she helps Stiles fuss at his father for eating too much junk. 

Lydia and Laura barely come out of their room for dinner, but they’re both working on schoolwork and not having sex so they’re excused. Laura does pull Stiles aside during that break and they have a pretty intense conversation, but when they come back they’re more at ease around each other than they have been for years. Derek wants to ask questions, but Stiles knows that look on his face so he shakes his head no.

They go back to New Orleans for a month, and then they’re back at home for Christmas break. Stiles and Laura declare that they have to go out for the evening, and Derek knows that they’re trying to patch things up from when Laura had kept him and Stiles separated for so long in high school so Derek spends the evening with Cora.

Cora’s band is very popular, so she can’t even leave the house without some sort of bodyguard even though they’re in Beacon Hills. Derek walks around with her at the outdoor shopping center, where she goes Christmas shopping for a few last minute gifts. They aren’t stopped by people very often because Derek glares at people who look like they’re even thinking about it, but he sees that people are trying to take pictures of his sister all the time. 

One person does walk up to them, and Derek sees that it’s Kate Argent, with Allison right next to her. Allison immediately starts talking to Derek and Cora, and Derek finds out that Allison is engaged to Scott McCall. Kate asks Derek if he’s seeing anyone, and Derek tries not to flinch at her hand stroking up his arm. 

Cora glares at Kate and starts talking about Stiles, and Allison seems happy that Derek and Stiles are still together. Kate says that she’s happy that she doesn’t see a ring on Derek’s finger because that leaves her some small hope, and Derek realizes that he wants a ring on his finger. He wants to be married to Stiles, wants to call him his husband and announce to the world that Stiles belongs to him.

He waits until Kate and Allison are gone, and then he whispers to Cora, “I want to go to a jewelry store.”

“What?” Cora asks, and she twists a little with panic for some reason.

“I need to go to a jewelry store, I have to get something for Stiles,” Derek says.

“Oh, um… I mean, I have to get home and wrap these presents and get everything ready for tonight, and we should probably get home now, because gosh, look at the time…”

Derek studies his little sister’s face, and he realizes that she has been instructed to keep him busy and away from jewelry stores that day. He smiles, because his Stiles is always a step ahead of him.

“Not that we couldn’t go to a jewelry store,” Cora sputters, pulling her phone out. “I mean, we can go right now if you want…”

“It’s okay,” Derek says, grinning his ass off. “I can go later this afternoon…”

“No!” Cora almost screams, “I mean, if you want to, not that it’s that big of a deal, I mean who doesn’t need to go to a jewelry store? You can go to a jewelry store if you want to, it seems like it’s a good idea, let’s go now because I think that we should…”

Derek is laughing at this point. He ruffles his sister’s hair, and they get into his car and drive back to the Hale House.

“You know, don’t you?” Cora grumbles.

“I have an inkling,” Derek tells her.

“Can you act surprised? They’re going to get mad that I told and I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Don’t worry, I think I got it covered,” Derek tells her. This for some reason does not reassure Cora, and she moans into her hand while he takes a small detour to the bookstore. He and Cora spend almost thirty minutes picking out the book that they want, and Cora snorts with laughter the entire time. They end up with a pale blue book covered with images of lace, held together as a binder so that more pages can be slipped in or removed as they see fit. There’s nice little plastic zipper pages so that things can be put into it, and there’s a place for receipts and in the back for addresses and phone numbers. Each divider carries names like, ‘Catering,’ ‘Flowers,’ ‘Reception,’ ‘Invitations,’ and most importantly, ‘The Dress.’ 

Derek and Cora joke all the way back to the house about who’s going to wear The Dress, and while Derek thinks Stiles would look smashing in a white floor length gown Cora insists that Derek needs to go with an embroidered ivory number with spaghetti straps. 

Dinner that night is packed with family, and Derek can’t stop grinning through the whole thing. He sits with Stiles, and he almost wants to cry when his mom brings out the dessert and everyone gets really quiet when she put the slice of cake down in front of him with Stiles’s ring on it. Stiles gets down on one knee in front of Derek’s whole family and asks him to spend the rest of his life with him, and Derek says yes almost a hundred times in a row. They hug and kiss, and the entire family is taking pictures, and Cora pulls out the pale blue book to start writing down the proposal. 

Derek might have cried a tiny bit, but no one is holding that against him and he doesn’t care because the look on Stiles’s face is ecstatic. 

They go out the day after Christmas because Derek insists that Stiles have a matching ring, although it’s hard for Derek to afford it. Apparently, consulting for the FBI is a well-paying job, so Stiles laughs, not like he’s mocking but in sheer delight, when Derek insists on making payments instead of outright buying it like Stiles did. Stiles says that he doesn’t have to have the exact same ring, but Derek is insistent on the matter so he doesn’t push.

They run into Kate again, and she looks pissed when she sees the ring on Derek’s finger. Stiles is more upset about it than Derek is, because Derek just outright doesn’t care about her opinion. 

They do go and look at tuxes for a while, and they make appointments with a wedding planner for their spring break. Stiles wants to get married the next Christmas, and Derek quickly agrees to that.

That spring when they return to New Orleans, Stiles becomes the interest of a Voodoo priestess named Marie. Derek almost wants to laugh at it, because Stiles has never had experience where someone liked him besides Derek. He says that it isn’t like people haven’t ever asked him out before, but the whole ‘Let’s be best friends-I know you’re gay-maybe you’d like to experiment’ mentality is completely new to Stiles. He isn’t quite sure how to respond to some of her blatant attempts at getting him in bed, and it’s not like he can avoid her because she’s one of his co-workers, a consultant with the FBI. 

When Derek meets her, she’s interested in a threesome, but Derek isn’t so good at sharing, especially when it comes to Stiles. He tells her to lay off his fiancée, and he’s not as pleasant about it as Stiles was with Clara. He growls a little, and bares his fangs. Stiles tells him that it’s dangerous to antagonize a priestess that way, but after two months of her trying to get into Stiles’s pants Derek’s a little fed up with her. 

Fortunately, whatever kind of magic that Stiles practices is stronger than Marie’s voodoo, so their home is safe from Marie’s revenge. It does not keep them from dodging a slight rain of frogs, nor does it keep the rats out of the neighboring apartment so that Derek and Stiles have to escape to a nearby hotel while the manager fumigates the entire building. The Thibideauxs offer their home to them for a week, and they get the Alpha to talk to Marie’s fellow practitioners, because it isn’t like voodoo has a hierarchy to appeal to an authority. 

Marie lays off after that, though, so it must have worked. Stiles can still go to work, and Marie does let him know that she’s still interested, but she diverts her attention elsewhere which is such a relief to both Derek and Stiles. 

They move back into their apartment, and clean the entire thing from top to bottom. Derek likes watching Stiles clean, he does it wearing only a pair of jeans and a some sandals. It’s always hot in New Orleans, so Derek takes a lot of breaks so that he can watch the sweat trickling down the tattoos decorating Stiles’s back. He likes the way the ink looks on Stiles’s pale skin, and cleaning takes a lot longer than it should because Derek distracts Stiles from whatever he’s doing in a very physical manner. Stiles never complains, smiles and laughs and kisses Derek while they make love. 

Derek gets his own gallery showing, and Stiles is so proud of him that Derek wants to hide his face because he’s so red. Stiles even brings in some of his co-workers, and a lot of the art patrons look nervous around so many men in suits who are built like line backers. Derek shakes hands with them all, startles a bit when they nudge Stiles and tell him that he’s got good taste. 

The Cajun pack takes Derek and Stiles out to celebrate, one of the members who lives on the bayou has cooked up a lot of food and Derek starts teaching Stiles how to dance those dirty Cajun dances. It takes Stiles a lot longer to catch on than it did Derek, but by the end of the evening Derek’s having a hard time keeping his hands off of Stiles. 

The other wolves whistle, and Derek knows that there’s going to be pictures on their Facebook group wall. He doesn’t care because he loves seeing Stiles looking at him this way, loves letting the world see how he looks at Stiles. 

Stiles mentions that night he suspects that Derek might have a small streak of exhibitionism in him. Derek thinks about it for just a moment before he agrees with Stiles. 

Which is nice, because during Mardi Gras, Stiles tucks them into an alley with thousands of people around them, and Derek fucks him against the brick wall. It’s one of the few times they both wear condoms so that they don’t have a mess to clean up, but Derek loves the fact that they left them behind in the alley so that everyone knows they just had sex there, that they had a few people walk past them and whistle at them, and that Stiles was willing to let Derek announce to the world in this way that Stiles is his. 

Stiles is called away on a case a week before their spring break, and Derek has to go to Tulane to deliver a file of papers to one of Stiles’s professors. Derek still has no idea what Stiles does, and he hasn’t pushed for information, but some of the pictures on the walls of Stiles’s professor’s office make him wonder. There’s newspaper articles and pictures and Xeroxes of tomes of old books posted in strange patterns all over the walls, and it looks like several years’ worth of work is posted on the wall. Derek stares in confusion at the walls, and when Stiles’s professor comes in she takes the file folder from Derek and wishes him a good day. 

Derek meets Stiles at the airport. Their plane is leaving at such a time that Stiles can’t even go back to the apartment, and they board their plane just in time for Stiles to pass out in the seat next to Derek. 

Derek worried about Stiles. It was just something that he did, mostly because Stiles was so tight lipped about what he did with the FBI and what kind of magic he was capable of. Derek trusted Stiles, trusted him with everything that he had, but he didn’t like that Stiles kept secrets. It was like there was a barrier between the two of them, and Derek didn’t know how to knock it down or even if he should.

Lydia was home for Spring Break, but Laura couldn’t make it. It was a little awkward for Derek to be around Lydia because they had never really been friends, but she and Stiles got along so well it was scary. Jackson and Cora had decided to take their spring break in Hawaii with Danny and his cousins, so the house seemed kind of empty for all that, and Derek was stuck with Stiles and Lydia.

Lydia helped them out with some of their wedding plans. She went to the wedding planner with them, and insisted they have black and red as their colors instead of red and blue. Derek preferred the color scheme anyway, although Stiles was a little put out that they wouldn’t have an excuse for a Spiderman wedding cake. 

Lydia turned out to not be too bad of an ally to have during the wedding preparation. She was still planning for hers and Laura’s wedding in June, and she said that they might have another couple of weddings the next year, if everything worked out okay. 

Derek didn’t even pretend to not know that she was talking about her mother and Stiles’s dad and Cora and Jackson, but Stiles didn’t want to think about it at all.

Jackson talked to Derek’s mom about The Bite. She was a little uncertain because he wasn’t a teenager anymore and she said that adults generally don’t do well with The Change, but that if he and Cora agreed over the summer than she would do it. It caused a lot of tension in their house, but Stiles said that he could probably help out and that diffused a lot of it. 

Spring break was over quickly, and Derek and Stiles returned to school and work. Derek had taken up an apprenticeship with a local glass maker, so he was busy between school and work and didn’t notice that time kept passing. 

They went back to the Hale House and their cabin for the summer. Stiles had to leave sometimes for his work, but it wasn’t ever for very long. 

Lydia’s and Laura’s wedding was beautiful, they had gotten their marriage license out of state and they had the wedding in the Hale’s backyard. It was wonderful, and a little like being transported into a fairy land. Stiles made sure that all of the flowers were perfect, because his magic liked doing things like that. He even got some of their climbing flowers to bloom, which Mrs. Hale had never been able to do before. They were supposed to be pink, but somehow bloomed yellow, which matched Lydia’s color scheme. Stiles just smiled when Derek teased him about it, but there were kisses so Derek didn’t tease him too much.

Stiles was Laura’s best man, and Lydia had Allison stand in for her. They looked beautiful up there, and Derek got choked up thinking that he and Stiles were going to be next. Kate showed up, scowling the entire time, but Derek did his best to ignore her. 

Both girls walked down the aisle. Mr. Hale walked his daughter, and Derek could see Stiles getting choked up when his dad walked Lydia. He might not like the thought of his dad getting married, but Derek knew that Stiles would never say no to more family. 

It worried Derek about having children. He wondered if they were going to have to find a surrogate or if Stiles was going to want to adopt. The thought of it bothered him a lot more than he had been prepared for. He wanted Stiles to have everything, and he didn’t know how to give him children. 

When the time came for dancing, Laura could tell something was bothering him. She just rolled her eyes at him and told him he was worrying too much. She and Lydia were already way ahead of him, and when the time was right she was going to carry Stiles’s child and Lydia was going to carry Derek’s. They were going to keep Lydia’s babies and send her children to Derek and Stiles, and they were going to have as many children as they wanted. It was one of the perks of being twins and step-siblings, and they might as well take advantage of it. 

Derek wanted to kiss his sister, and she giggled when he did. He didn’t know why he had to overcomplicate things when he could just share his worries with his family and they would figure out a solution in no time. 

Jackson took The Bite the next week while Laura and Lydia were on their honeymoon. He didn’t react well, like Mrs. Hale had worried about, but Stiles was there by his side the entire time. He put his cloak on while Jackson writhed on the floor of the living room, and Derek tried not to let himself get distracted as Stiles knelt by Jackson’s side. Jackson’s body for some reason kept growing scales, but Stiles seemed to know what was going on and he had Cora hold his hand while he touched Jackson’s stomach. A strange light filled the living room and Jackson screamed, and Derek had to go hold Jackson down for a while. It was a long night, but when Jackson came out of it his eyes were glowing blue, like Derek’s did when he wolfed out. Jackson became the newest Beta in the Hale pack, and he was welcomed with open arms and he gave his ring to Cora.

Cora was a pop star. It was the weirdest thing in Derek’s head, but she was internationally known and she got a lot of fan mail at their house. She and Jackson left for most of July while she toured eastern Asia, and to hit a few tour spots in Europe before school started. She was recording with some South Korean band, too, and she seemed very excited about that.

Derek and Stiles kept to themselves mostly, when they weren’t with Derek’s mother making final plans for their wedding. Most everything was picked out and Mrs. Hale agreed to mail out their invitations in October. They had everything finalized by the end of July, and Stiles and Derek started getting their things ready for their last year in New Orleans. 

They had agreed that they wanted to return home after the year was over. They wanted to live in their cabin, and Stiles wanted to get his Ph. D. in California. Derek wasn’t sure if he wanted to attend grad school, but he wasn’t completely rejecting the idea. He still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his art. 

Stiles told him he could be his stay-at-home husband if he wanted to. He kind of liked the idea of Derek in an apron, although Derek had to wrestle him to the ground for even thinking like that. Stiles told him that they should build a studio on the Hale land so that Derek could make art, because Stiles liked how happy Derek was while he was doing it. Derek wasn’t terribly sure he wanted to spend Stiles’s money that way, but when Stiles added that they might want to add some rooms onto their cabin while they were doing construction, in case they needed extra bedrooms for some reason, Derek couldn’t tell him no. 

Derek’s last year of college and Stiles’s last year of grad school went by quickly. They were both so busy with their end-of-year projects and last minute classes and their wedding that they weren’t sure they were going to have time for each other. They sat on the couch almost every night with their laptops in hand when Derek wasn’t at the studio or working on his apprenticeship with the glass master, or Stiles wasn’t at the local FBI headquarters. They sometimes got to spend a weekend together, which meant that they ordered pizza and didn’t leave the bed and watched really bad television together. 

They skipped going home for Thanksgiving, and Mrs. Hale told them that it was going to be very quiet because Laura and Lydia were doing the same thing. There was just so much work and it felt like they were behind, so they had Thanksgiving with the Thibideauxs and some of the Cajun pack. 

They did go home for their wedding and Christmas, but they had both agreed that they were going to take their honeymoon after they graduated. Stiles had arranged for them to get their marriage license, and Derek loved signing that piece of paper with Stiles. Legally they were already married at the ceremony, and that was all that mattered to them. 

They had a very small wedding because it was held inside the Hale house. Stiles had decorated with mistletoe and holly, and Lydia and Mrs. Hale had organized everything because they were fabulous that way. It worked out well with their schedules. 

Derek and Stiles stood at the front. Stiles wore his cloak and some of his relatives from Poland came. Laura stood up for Stiles and Jackson stood up for Derek. Mr. Hale pronounced them husbands and presented them to their families, and there were tears. Mostly Derek’s. 

Jackson proposed to Cora at Christmas dinner, which was kind of weird because they had to issue a press release about it. 

They teased Isaac about being in high school and asked Tabby about fifth grade. She announced that she had a girlfriend, and no one teased her about it at all although they did ask if her girlfriend wanted to come over. Isaac declared that both boys and girls were unappealing to him, and that he liked being by himself most of the time. No one gave him a hard time about that, either. 

They flew back for their last semester of college. Stiles worked on getting his transfer to the San Fransisco branch of the FBI, and it was given to him almost immediately, although the New Orleans branch offered him ridiculous things in order for him to stay. Derek had his last gallery showing with the University, and Remy took care of all sales. Derek gave him a commission, and Remy talked about moving out to California with Derek and Stiles when they left for the summer. 

Mr. Hale sent pictures of the progress of their cabin, making sure that everything was going according to Derek’s plans. The additional bedrooms had a lot of details, including a new bathroom that was put in between them. Derek had let whimsy rule him when he was talking with the architect, and one of the rooms had a built in window seat with compartments underneath it and the other room had a little loft that required a ladder. Both of them had low ceilings, although the room with the window seat had a sloping ceiling on one side of it. Stiles teased Derek that he wanted a girl and a boy to fill up the rooms, and Derek didn’t deny it. He happened to really like children. 

His studio though was completely gorgeous and made almost entirely out of glass and wood. It blended in surprisingly well with the surrounding forest, and Derek couldn’t wait to get into it. 

When they walked for graduation, Derek’s parents, Sheriff Stilinski, Mrs. Martin, and Cora and Jackson showed up. Isaac and Tabby stayed behind with Uncle Peter in California. They packed up the old apartment and hired a moving van to ship everything back, said goodbye to the Thibideauxs and the Cajun pack (sans Remy, because he was already picking out an apartment in Beacon Hills) and then they flew to Boston together. 

Lydia and Laura were going to stay out there and had chosen a very nice house together. Laura was starting law school in the fall and Lydia was going to get her Ph.D., since she was skipping her Master’s as she had already been published and done enough research while she was doing her undergrad. Her advisor saw no reason for her to wait and do her Master’s, and she agreed with him.

Their graduations were a day apart, so it meant they didn’t have to stay in Boston for very long. Stiles was glad because the Boston pack still creeped both him and Derek out, although Mr. and Mrs. Hale were both comfortable around them. Stiles theorized that night in their hotel room that it was because there was no way that they could get into the Hale’s heads because they were both too laid back to respond of anyone tried to control them, and Derek liked the sound of that. 

They flew back to California, and Derek and Stiles joined the mile high club. It was probably a little too easy because they had ended up with seats in the back by themselves, and Derek had brought on a really big blanket because Stiles always got cold on plane rides. Derek slouched with his back in the corner, and Stiles removed his seatbelt after slipping a condom onto Derek so that they wouldn’t have the clean-up issues. Derek lifted the blanket at the same time that Stiles lifted the armrest, and then Stiles sat with his back to Derek’s chest and worked down the waistline of his baggy pants. He slid onto Derek with an ease that told him that he had prepared himself in the terminal bathroom before they got on, and Derek almost lost it at that thought. He kissed Stiles’s neck and whispered things into his ear as Stiles maneuvered himself slowly up and down Derek’s cock, the muscles in his arms straining and biting his lip so that he wouldn’t moan, although when he did it wasn’t like anyone could hear him over the plane’s engine. Derek came long before Stiles, and had to reach around and finish his husband off when he slipped out of him. 

Stiles passed out, so Derek took their condoms to the toilet to flush them, and he got a wink from the stewardess who had seen what they had been up to in the back seat. Derek flushed, and the thought of being watched got him a little hard again, but he didn’t bother Stiles when he moved back to their seats, just rearranged his lover into a comfortable position in his arms and pulled out his Kindle so he could catch up on his reading. 

Derek hung his and Stiles’s degrees in his childhood bedroom, which his mother approved of. Stiles didn’t really want them in their house because he thought it would look too much like bragging and he really didn’t know what else to do with them. 

Stiles enjoys his work with the FBI, he says it makes him feel like a badass. He’s been accepted to get his Ph.D. at the local UC, even though Derek isn’t sure exactly what it’s in. Just that whenever he goes to take Stiles lunch on campus, Stiles has his own office and official looking people are always waiting outside it. Derek feels weird cutting in front of all those people, and sometimes they look annoyed that he gets precedent over them with his husband, but Stiles’s secretary loves letting Derek interrupt any meeting he wants to.

Part of that might be that Erica is Stiles’s secretary. Derek remembers that Erica had a crush on Stiles in high school, and Laura reminds him that she liked Stiles in middle school also, so thanks for that, Laura. Stiles swears that Erica doesn’t even care about him that way and she’s an amazingly bitchy secretary, well worth every penny the school pays her to be awful to the people who think that their position entitles them to waste Stiles’s time. When Derek comes to pick up Stiles late one night and finds her wrapped around Boyd, Derek figures that he doesn’t have to be jealous of Stiles’s secretary any more.

Derek gets to spend all of his time creating in his studio, and he loves it. Remy doesn’t only represent Derek’s work, but he does use a lot of it to find other artists in California and soon Remy has his own gallery open. He invites Cora to the opening, and pulls in more clients using her star power, which she doesn’t mind telling everyone that Remy represents her brother and she’s sure that all of her fans will appreciate knowing about him so that they can take a little bit of her family home with them. 

Derek’s stuff sells, a lot because of Cora and in part because it’s actually good. His prices go up as Remy sells to more and more famous people, and Derek’s shocked when he gets a feature in Stars magazine. Remy winks at him and just says that he’s that good, and Derek has to believe it when he uses that Cajun charm to sell some artist’s toothbrush in a pretty pottery cup to a couple with a hole burning in their wallet. Remy says that it’s not really a toothbrush, but Derek can see where the Crest logo has been filed off and filled with putty. 

Stiles joins Derek on the front porch of their cabin every night, and they watch the sunset and talk about what’s going on in their heads. Stiles works on his dissertation at night, and occasionally Derek flies by himself to see one of Cora’s concerts. Stiles will occasionally bring home someone for dinner, usually an Agent who’s been called in specially and has been overworked. Stiles lets whoever wander around their backyard, sometimes taking a nap in the hammock back there, and they wake up refreshed and ready to go again. Derek finds it a little weird, but he never makes a comment on it. 

A couple of years pass this way, enjoyable to both of them. Mrs. Martin finally does marry Stiles’s dad, bringing their family all that much closer. Cora’s wedding to Jackson makes the front page news, and within a few months Derek and Stiles become uncles. Laura and Lydia call Derek and Stiles up to visit them in Boston. They all go to the doctor’s office, and then Derek and Stiles go home with smiles on their faces. 

Laura calls them first, to tell them that they’re going to be fathers, and then Lydia calls them only a few weeks later to tell them they will be uncles again. Stiles goes into a frenzy of cleaning and preparing the rooms, especially when Laura tells them that Stiles is especially potent and seems to have made twins. Derek tells Stiles he might just want to put them in one room until they’re a couple of years old, and Stiles concedes that might be a good idea. 

They fly out to Boston with Mrs. Hale after Stiles has taken paternity leave, and they’re there when both of the girls go into labor, although Lydia waits an entire day after Laura’s given birth. Mrs. Hale is with them to help them afterwards, and Stiles and Derek take home Nik and Talia Stilinski-Hale a week later, both of them with black hair, but Nik has Derek’s eyes and Talia has Stiles’s. Amelia Matin-Hale stays with her mothers in Boston, already a red-head with Laura’s eyes. 

The twins keep them up a lot, they fuss and refuse to sleep at the same time. They make Derek and Stiles crazy, but it’s a good crazy and they wouldn’t trade it for the world. They’re the most precious things in the world, and Nik needs all the attention he can get because he’s obviously inherited the Hale genes when they find him, fully changed into a cub, in his crib one morning. Talia is the only one who can get close to him at that point, because he snaps a little at Stiles and Derek and won’t put up with anyone else at all. They get along with their cousin, Delilah Whittmore, who loves her baby cousins and considers them hers. When Laura and Lydia come with Amelia that year for Christmas, the house is filled with the sounds of babies, and Derek and Stiles smile at each other contentedly. 

One night, after the kids have fallen asleep, Derek leaves them with Isaac in their living room playing video games and he takes Stiles back up to his parents’ attic. Stiles sits still as Derek draws him in charcoal again, this time he’s better and the picture turns out wonderfully. Derek adds holly berries and mistletoe, Mardi Gras beads and Rufus, a lacrosse stick and running shoes. He puts some of Stiles’s tattoos in the background and a picture of the stained glass window that he made for his first gallery showing. He draws pictures of their children and himself, and the whole thing should be too much but the way that it flows it’s not really. It’s just a portrait of their life together so far. 

Stiles hangs it above their fireplace in their cabin, puts candles in front of the ornate frame he picked out for it. Derek makes love to Stiles on the rug of their living room floor, and it’s everything he’s ever wished for.


End file.
